XMen Rising Part Two 'Fox in the Henhouse'
by Randirogue
Summary: Follows Part 1 'Birds of a Feather.' Compounding tribulations & increasing responsibilities from Liberty Island & Alkali Lake erupt. Unfortunately, disguises abound. Ch5: “Well, the solution to that is easy. We make the highest bid.”
1. Chapter 1 of 5 Proceed Remy's Conquests

**Obligatory Author's Notes:**

This continues directly from X-Men Rising: Part One – 'Birds of a Feather.' Please read that first. You can go directly to it with the following link.  
http/www(dot)fanfiction(dot)net/s/2911284/1/

Disclaimer from Part One applies here as well.

Like in the Part One, there are footnotes that link you to pics on deviant art. They are noted appropriately within the text. Please check them out. I am quite proud of them. However, I am disappointed in myself for how few there are this time around.

Finally… my appreciation abounds.

Thank all the lovely, wonderful, generous reviewers of "Birds of a Feather." I would have included replies to those added after I posted the last chapter of Part One, but it is late and I am tired. So, please forgive me.

Thank you also, SLH, Ludi, and Strannik for your beta-skills. (Apologies for leaving you out last time, Strannik.)

Without further adieu…

* * *

(1)

**Part Two - 'Fox in the Henhouse'**

**Chapter One**

Frost Inc. was a rapidly growing force in the business world. It probably had something to do with the founder gleaming insider information and manipulating soft-minded industry leaders with her telepathy.

"No, Mr. Lehnsherr, I am quite certain that I am not interested in joining you in a _tête-à-tête_ against the _human_ government, as you so eloquently put it, in an attempt at a _coup de grâce_ or _coup d'état_, whatever you would-be dictator types would call it, now, or at any time in the future."

Emma was not the least bit intimidated with the statuesque man on the other side of her desk. He was holding a purple helmet, of all things, and managed to appear stately despite it. She completely dismissed the blue scaly woman beside him for this conversation. _Any_ subordinate to _anyone_—would-be-assistant-world-dominatrix or not—wasn't worth her attention. Besides, even if she angered them enough to kill her, well, she'd be dead, so what would she care. Living long enough to suffer the fall of her enterprise, however...

"As much as I enjoy a good thrashing of the little people," she continued, "Doing it your way would likely put an end to any and all contracts my company has with them. Unfortunately for you, I happen to like my life as it is."

A quick staccato knock preceded the entrance of Amara Aquilla, a princess in her own way, Emma's secretary and personal assistant. Most people didn't know that Amara could create molten lava hot enough, dense enough, that with some effort and time, she could turn coal into diamonds. That very ability made her one of Emma Frost's pupils… and bodyguards. Should some unsavory public display occur, Amara could ride to the rescue. Emma would remain safe—her human body _and_ her human image.

"I know you said you didn't want to be interrupted, Ms. Frost, but that man you said to let through no-matter-what is on line three."

"Thank you, Amara."

Amara looked around the room, finding it confusingly empty other than Emma. "I thought I heard voices in here."

"I was watching the commercial proposals," Emma said matter-of-factly. "Any other messages?"

"Yes," Amara said, her thoughts immediately returning to her job. "Warren confirmed the two o'clock meeting. Also, Mr. Leland called again, as did Mr. Shaw. They insist it's urgent."

"Of course they do," Emma said condescendingly. "Men of power always seem to believe the world revolves around them." She flicked her eyes towards Magneto. Keeping his and his subordinate's presence clouded from Amara's mind as she was, Amara assumed she was looking at the opened window.

"Want me to close that? It's getting chilly in here."

"No, I might want to throw something out it."

A small laugh and Amara asked, "Commercials that bad?"

"Does nobody understand the concepts of subtlety and elegance anymore?" Again, that was directed at Magneto, though this time she didn't look at him. "Ramming ideas down everyone's throats seems to be the theme nowadays. Speaking of which, I better take this call."

Amara nodded with the hint, and backed out the door, closing it behind her.

"Personal barbs aside," Erik said, "Perhaps your intern would like to hear of my invitation?"

Emma narrowed her eyes as a diamond sheen formed across her skin. It glittered like ice, but it's facets caused more light to dance and sparkle off her, as though she had bathed in crystalline dust. "Those, whom I mentor are none of your concern. I've lost my patience with you, Mr. Lehnsherr. Take your scaly floozy and leave."

Mystique eased a vicious and greedy smile.

An undulating rustle and Mystique's slicked red locks tumbled loose, a sound like shifting sand, to frame her face in platinum luster. Blue skin faded to a tawny undertone. Scales lifted and stretched and wrapped into pearlescent bustier, skirt, and pumps that were supposed to qualify as a business suit. It was a pristine transformation that captured Ms. Frost's likeness down to the black and green flecks in her blue eyes, the pale freckles only a magnifying mirror could find on her cheeks and shoulders, and even the ethereal Victorian fashion trinket choked around her neck (2).

In Emma's voice, Mystique said, "Careful what you project, _Emma_. You are disposable too."

Magneto grinned with pride at her, Mystique, his prized possession. He made the smallest of gestures, a call upon his namesake powers, to levitate the thin metal discs that he and she stood atop. As Magneto and Mystique left through the opened window in which they had arrived, the very same one Amara had offered to close, Emma's diamond shell evaporated.

Emma was a model of calm enduring strength that the business world boasted a necessity of its leaders. Too bad the quiver of the cameo on her choker gave her slight trembling away. The diamonds accenting the edge of the cameo reflected light like a loose bulb flickering from an upsetting jostling. Even the ghostly figure imbued upon the blue stone seemed to shudder a sigh.

Her fingertips fluttered to steady it with a caress.

Emma picked up line three. When she spoke, the voice did not belong to Emma, but to that of the face on the cameo.

"You were right," She said without bothering with a greeting. "Magneto was just here. Recruiting. He's moving faster than Sabretooth thought he would."

* * *

Sabretooth closed the final slab restraint on the mutant subject 47, otherwise known as Caliban to the Morlocks.

"That will be all for now, Creed," Essex told him. "When I have completed this one's alterations, we'll proceed with Remy's conquests."

Before Creed was out the door, Essex returned to the phone call with Emma… or her parasite, rather. Malice.

"He was prepared for the possibility that we would compromise Victor. But, it matters not with our plans. I've done some preparing on my side for such contingencies. His war will be but a trifle in comparison to what will inevitably come after."

* * *

An anticipatory tremor, pleasurable, palpitated Emma/Malice. It was echoed in the cameo.

"My new host," she said. Her voice was breathy, as with foreplay.

* * *

"Almost ready," Essex said. Though his voice was steadier, he looked hungrily at the specialized reinforced cell that Kitty had merely mentioned to the other X-Men while they were in Essex's lab earlier.

Logan's initial observance of Hank when they were riding back to the Xavier's in the Blackbird would have been more aptly suited to Essex, the man responsible for McCoy's transformation from a mild-mannered, cultured, inquisitive, stocky biologist to the blue furred monstrous Beast that was rescued.

"Are you complaining about your current host?"

* * *

Malice/Emma sobered. She did not want to suffer Essex's brand of a hasty solution.

"She is tasty enough," Malice explained. "Her pupils seem to be catching on that something's different with their revered mentor. There's an empath or two among them."

* * *

"I see," Essex said. "Trickier than telepathy to circumvent, in its own way. If they were here now, I could easily remedy it with the chip as I did Remy. No matter, though. It won't be long now."

* * *

"Two days," Callisto agreed with a nod. "We'll be waiting."

"And watching, Weather Witch," Marrow piped in. "Don't think we didn't notice the military girl all cuffed up and knocked out. You X-Men taking prisoner's now, are you?"

"Sarah, that is quite enough!" A clap of lightning and a rumble of thunder echoed from above in accompaniment.

Callisto narrowed her eyes on Storm. "She has a point. We don't need that kind of trouble. Got enough of our own just trying to survive. And now, with Caliban's disappearance…"

"You're not possibly suggesting we had anything to do—"

"You best not be playing us for fools, is all I gotta say."

"Never." It was stern, solid, confident, and responsible, with an undercurrent of compassion. Storm was coming into her own as much as the younger, newer team members were. They all had their own evolutions to undergo.

"Excuse us while we don't just take your word on that."

With that, tenuous and tethered and trying, the Morlocks went home.

* * *

"You just let them go?"

"What did you expect me to do, Scott? Lock them up and throw away the key?" Xavier wheeled around behind his desk. "They are precisely the people I want to help most. They are hiding in the sewers, fearing the smallest glimpse that humans may catch of them."

"Even more reason to make them stay," Scott rationalized. "This place is a paradise compared to that kind of life."

"If I forced them, they'd hide from us, too."

"What about the other two we brought back?"

"What about them? We are giving the Major medical treatment for injuries that one of our own inflicted. When she recovers, she will be free to leave. And Remy, well…"

Xavier closed his eyes in concentration for a moment. With a gentle, knowing smile, he added, "It seems he's already accepted the invitation. For the time being, at least."

Scott flinched as if slapped. "You don't think that's too much of a risk? He broke out of the adamantium _military_ cuffs we were holding him in. I don't even want to imagine what he could break _into_ here."

"It's a chance I'm willing to take."

"Even if it costs someone their life? One of the kids, even?"

"…" Xavier took a deep steadying breath. "This is what I was afraid of. You're so easily upset. Ever since Jean—"

"Don't do this."

"You need time, Scott. We all do, but you most of all. That is why I've been divvying some of the responsibility onto Storm as co-lead—"

"Don't use her as a reason to keep me out of the loop."

"It's why," Xavier continued, speaking over him, "against all of my better judgment, I've allowed those four _kids_ onto the team. You're just not ready, yet."

"That's just it, though," Scott all but yelled. "Four more people, untrained, inexperienced, and so young! Kitty's only now sixteen, Professor! I feel like a babysitter not a mission leader. And then, to walk out of that jet and see those _Morlocks_… and you… I thought we were under attack again. But Storm knew them. You knew them."

"Scott…"

"I _don't_ need more confusion. I _don't_ need to be coddled," Scott emphasized. "I _need_ to keep busy, Professor. The school, the _team_… they're all I have left anymore."

Teacher and student. Mentor and apprentice. Friend and family. Respect between them, respect, and care, and heartache, and encouragement, and defeats, and victories, and beliefs, and opinions, and… and differences.

"I'm sorry you feel that way, Scott." Such finality.

Scott turned away in a disgruntled huff. If this wouldn't convince Xavier to let him back in, he didn't know what would.

"More so, I'm sorry I misjudged the situation so terribly." The gates opened.

Scott turned, warily and tethered and pleading, back to the Professor.

"Forgive me for holding you back."

Scott nodded, half '_yes_' and half '_go on_.'

Xavier opened a drawer in his desk.

"There are some things I think I must confer with you about."

He reached in.

"A puzzle I could use your assistance in piecing together."

He shuffled around some papers inside.

"All of what's been happening lately."

He pulled out several files.

"The disappearances."

Caliban, Henry…

"The power surges."

Leach, Jean, Jono, Jubilee, Kitty, Kevin…

"Daresay I, the advances of some mutants powers."

He reached in again.

"Stryker's attack with Cerebro."

He pulled out a book. It's aged leather bound cover, warped and tattered, but oiled with great care.

"My visitor this morning."

He set it all atop the file atop the desk.

"If you would be so kind as to look through these and tell me what you think."

A mourner's pause, then Scott picked up the proffered items. "Certainly, Professor."

But, Xavier grabbed Scott's hand. "I would request that you wait, though. Not because I don't trust you to handle the task. Not even because I loathe the idea of the journal, myself. But for a simpler reason of one who cares about your well being, of which I am quite guilty. It is late—"

He glanced at the daylight blasting through the windows of his office.

"—Late morning, actually. We had a long day, and an even longer night, and if this is what I think it is, we could all use all the rest we can get before we confront it. Read it tomorrow?"

Caution's pause.

"It is only a request." Xavier released Scott's hand. "The choice is yours to make, not mine."

Relief's release.

"Thank you, Professor."

"No, Scott. Thank you."

* * *

"Need a lift?"

"No thanks—" too late.

BAMF!

* * *

BAMF!

"Let me know when your birthday's getting close," Logan said as they arrived in the medlab. "'Cause, I swear I'm getting you some of those little pine tree things to hang off your ears and tail."

Kurt beamed a smile. Logan was certainly growing on him.

Fwump!

A pillow smacked into the side of Logan's head.

"_Keep it down, will ya?"_ Complained Jono telepathically from the second occupied bed. _"A half-faced bloke can't even get a half-arsed night of sleep around here anymore." _

By way of explanation, Piotr enlightened the psi-startled Hank with, "Telepathy is the only form of 'speech' left to Jono since his accident." To the young man of topic, he said, "Apologies." To the rest, he said, "We are leaving."

"Yeah, sorry," Bobby said and gave Rogue's gloved hand a tug, indicating she should walk with him.

The gesture was not lost on Gambit. "Monsieur Popsicle already knows his way around, _chére_. Why don't y' tuck in Remy instead?" He flicked out a card, charged it, and let it fizzle out as he said, "Bet it be a warmer bed too."

Rogue scoffed. "In your dreams, swamp rat." Scathing, yet still, that thread of near-endearment. Perhaps… perhaps, it was homesickness for the south.

"Oh, y' can be sure of that, _chére_."

"Keep a lid on it, Cajun," Logan said. "Everyone's going to their _own_ bed, ain't that right, Bobby, Rogue?"

"Of course, Logan, sir," Bobby reassured Logan…like a suitor to his date's dad on prom night.

"Like it'd even matter, anyways," Rogue said. She tried for matter-of-factly, and failed.

"_You can all pile into a bed together for all I care,"_ grumbled the sleepy Jono. _"Just do it somewhere else!"_

"Go on, get," Logan said with a swat to Rogue and Bobby.

"Sleep tight, Sugah," Rogue told Jono with a wave. "Don't let the bed bugs bite."

Remy fought down the biting innuendo that sprung to his lips as well. The mischievous scoundrel's grin, well, that he couldn't help. Soon as Rogue and Bobby were out of earshot, he glanced at Logan, and said, "See, claw-man, Remy _can_ restrain himself."

Logan gave him a shove towards the door. "Maybe, maybe not. Either way, the elf and I are watching ya in shifts."

Colossus and the good doctor McCoy were the last of the sleep-intruders to leave.

"This way," Piotr told McCoy before flipping out the light.

"_Finally,"_ grumbled Jono.

Slipping back into much-needed slumber, Jono heard, faintly, in the growing distance…

"He sure is colorful, isn't he?" Hank.

"Which one?" Piotr.

"…All of them, actually."

Piotr laughed. "Good answer."

* * *

**End Chapter 01 of 05.**  
(Anticipate daily updates.) 

**Next Chapter:** "The medlab is where we repair ourselves," Xavier said. "But here, here is where we prepare ourselves."

* * *

_Originally drafted April, 2003.  
Edited/rewritten/added-to April 27, 2006.  
Posted on May 25, 2006.

* * *

**Footnotes (links to pictures):**_

(1) http/www(dot)deviantart(dot)com/deviation/33777188/  
Header poster for XMR: Part Two – 'Fox in the Henhouse.'

(2) http/www(dot)deviantart(dot)com/deviation/33777345  
Choking Malice aka Malice's choker. Directly corellates with the following text.

It was a pristine transformation that captured Ms. Frost's likeness down to the black and green flecks in her blue eyes, the pale freckles only a magnifying mirror could find on her cheeks and shoulders, and even the ethereal Victorian fashion trinket choked around her neck.

…and…

Emma was a model of calm enduring strength that the business world boasted a necessity of its leaders. Too bad the quiver of the cameo on her choker gave her slight trembling away. The diamonds accenting the edge of the cameo reflected light like a loose bulb flickering from an upsetting jostling. Even the ghostly figure imbued upon the blue stone seemed to shudder a sigh.

* * *

_Thank you for indulging._


	2. Chapter 2 of 5 Call it the Danger Room

I have no willpower so here is an update already. Hehe.

**Review Responses:**

**Jason:** You are so uber awesome for reviewing before I could even tell you I posted. :D And yes, Remy is a manwhore, but one that liked to be chased by a lion tamer. :D And that, it a way, is it's own way of being tamed. :D

**Ishandahalf:** Oh mah lordy that was a quick response. What was it up for, five seconds, before you gave that lovely detailed long review. You are so my hero. Hehe, Emma's bitchiness impresses me too. I sort of write her after my eldest sister, with whom I don't exactly get along the best with. Though I love writing Emma, just the idea that I'm imbuing her with some of my sis is a bit cathartic for me… That's so wrong of me. Lol. And oh boyo, does Sinister got a well-woven web of spies going on. But, he's not the only one. Hopefully, it will be apparent that almost every scene has a sense of at least one character disguising something from the others in it. Part Two's title "Fox in the Henhouse" is named directly to that purpose… so, yes, it includes Remy. But… he's not the only one it speaks of. :D Now, for Jono… I heart Jono too. I've included him in every revision, evolution (whatever, hehe) of this movie-verse fic I've ever done. He is bad a$$. Woot! Actually, I'm having much fun writing everyone so far. That's how those moments ("like a suitor to his date's dad on prom night") keep happening. And egads, I can't wait to see ya'lls reactions to my fun with writing Jubilee. Hehe. And awww. The uber suckage regarding your laptop and the lost chapters. I will miss them, most certainly. And though I am enormously honored that you are enjoying my story so much, I hope it doesn't distract you from yours too much. I need my ish fix:D Good luck to you!

Thank everyone who is reading.

On with the mystery/drama/suspense…

* * *

**Chapter Two**

"Ach, Charles, I'm sorry," spouted a spirited Scottish brogue over the phone. "I meant to tell ye days ago I was sending them yer way. I've just had my hands so full with Kevin lately that it slipped my mind completely. I swear that boy is after my last wits. Lately, he's been after me calling him Proteus, of all things. Shape changing Sea God, my arse! He's no metamorph, that's for sure. And, he doesn't even like to swim!"

"It is quite understandable, Moira," Xavier said, the sleepiness nearly evaporated from his voice. "He is at an oftentimes difficult age."

"Not to mention the poor timing of his father, either!" Moira interjected with an exasperated huff. "Just my luck, I marry the only politician actually popular despite his pro-mutant agenda, and he up and leaves us for a showier mutant family."

"Prejudice comes in all forms, unfortunately."

"Aye, it does. And more," she continued, more and more upset. "An awfy peely-wally bairn sure does bugger a canny campaign to pure mince. Except for the occasional media opportunity, he's not been round to see Kevin in over a month now. Not since the new wife came up expecting."

"Does Kevin know about that yet?"

"Aye, he does. And he's taking it hard. And the harder he takes it, the wilder his powers get."

"Ahh," Xavier said, gathering clarity. "Perhaps, that explains why he insists on this name. Proteus. First born."

A heavy sigh, then, "Maybe." Another heavy sigh, and she relents with, "Ye don't be needing me gossiping about all me own problems like this." A snicker, and, "Sean will likely appreciate the minor relief from it, though, I'm sure."

"It is quite the colorful wake up call," Xavier said and chuckled.

"Better than waking to Theresa's nightmares." It was friendly familiarity, not Cerebro boosted telepathy that told him she was fingering her ear with the memories of the incidents. "Of all the mutant powers to give a teenage lass. Her father was one thing, but that girl gives new meaning to the phrase 'screams like a girl'."

"Nightmares still?" Xavier asked it tentatively. "I take it she won't be returning any time soon, then."

"Give him a wee bit more time. She means the world to him and the attack on the school gave him a hefty scare. He is coming around, though." Another one of her wicked snickers, and, "Especially after he got the last phone bill. Seems she be missing her friends back there more than he anticipated."

"I share his predicament."

"Aye, we all do. We'll close the gap one of these days." Her words expanded between them. Denser, denser. Weightier, weightier. So much more than simply distance between them. "It's a tough fight all around. We're lucky we have you on our side."

"Same for you, Moira. If enough people believed as you do, I wouldn't have much of a cause to fight for at all."

"Ye can stop with the flattery, Charles. I already offered ye full access to Muir any time ye want it." If she had been there in person, he would've seen her playful wink. "I should be letting ye go. From what ye told me about your late night, ye got your hands full."

"Indeed. And if I'm right, settling this might bring you answers regarding Kevin as well."

"A Godsend, that'd be. Thank ye. And thank ye for taking on Warren and Betsy for me. I'll call them and send them round to you at four like ye said."

"Thank you again, Moira. You have my blessings."

As soon as he had the phone hung up he drew upon his telepathy. _"Storm, gather the team. Meet me downstairs. I want to survey the anomalies of both Gambit and Rogue's gifts."_

A rumble of thunder…

"_Ororo, are you all right?"_

"Fine, Professor."

"_Are you certain?"_

Wisdom prevailed independence. "Every time I think I've finally earned their trust…" Rumble. "I haven't."

"_You may never gain it."_

Rumble…

"_But do you need it to continue helping them?"_

The drizzle followed in a pale weary mist.

* * *

Rumble…

Knock. Knock.

"Come in," permitted the confident leader's regal voice.

"Hey, Mags," Pyro said as he peered in. "Did you just park the Titanic downstairs?"

Magneto's eyes widened just a little bit. "The actual Titanic?"

"Close enough."

Bzzzt. A comm. device on Magneto's desk lit up. Without a physical motion, the metal button depressed, accepting the communication.

"Yes?" He asked.

"Pietro has returned," Mystique's multi-chromatic voice explained over the comm. "Wanda is not happy about it."

"Ahh… Now I understand," He said with a glance to Pyro. Through the comm., he instructed, "Separate them if you can. I'll deal with my children later. Cain and Cortez, however, send them up directly."

"They're on their way."

The comm. light blinked out. Mystique, brief and to the point, had disconnected it.

"Your children?" Pyro asked. "That was _Wanda_ throwing a tantrum or something?"

Eric frowned at him and it was enough.

"Fine, fine, I get it," Pyro said. On his way out, he grumbled, "Thought I left all this kid's table shit back at Xavier's."

Before the door even closed, a tongue clucked from the dark corner of Lensherr's office.

"Just say it," he instructed his companion in the dark.

"Why do you bother employing me when you aren't going to heed my warnings?"

"I don't want to _change_ the future," he reminded Destiny. "Not all of it, at least. However, I _do_ want to be prepared for it."

* * *

"The medlab, which you saw briefly this morning, is where we repair ourselves," Xavier said. "But here, here is where we prepare ourselves."

Xavier flipped a switch on the control panel in front of him. Light blossomed on the other side of the glass to illuminate an enormous box of a room, it's measure too vast for McCoy to estimate in so quickly skimmed a scope.

Clarifying proudly, Xavier said, "It is a fully interactive holographic training system that we monitor and control from this room."

"The cool people call it the Danger Room," Jubilee said, then blew a bubble with her gum and popped it. She had just entered with Kitty and Bobby. Two more steps in and she saw just to whom Xavier was explaining. It was a sight that drew from her the exuberant exclamation, "Dude, I bet you have fun on Halloween!"

Hank chuckled, thoroughly enjoying the joke as well as she. "I bet I could, actually." It was warm and jolly, as though he were grateful for being shown a positive side to his new beastly form.

"Jubilee…" Storm said with warmth of an entirely different kind in her voice.

Jubilee rolled her eyes and scoffed. "It was a _compliment_, Storm."

"That may be, but that doesn't explain what you're doing here at all. It's off limits to students."

Jubilee, not going anywhere, stuffed her hands in her yellow jacket, popped her gum again, and defended with, "Chucky said I could watch."

"Fine," Storm said. "But don't touch anything."

Jubilee waved her still pocketed hands at her sides in a _'like, duh'_ statement. Aloud, however, she said, "Fry a couple of video games and I'm branded for life."

"And TVs and laptops," Kitty added, "And DVD players and stereos and Storm's car…"

"Ha!" Jubilee rebounded. "The car was you, Kitty."

"Oh, yeah," Kitty said with a mild blush and peaks at Bobby and Piotr. That accident of hers occurred when trying to impress both of them, either of them. She had a sweet spot for the sweet guys.

Piotr, stoically, dutifully, looked everywhere but in Kitty's direction. Nope, he had no awareness of her crush on him. Not at all. Really.

Bobby, on the other hand, had caught her eye, but he flushed and quickly looked away. He surveyed the rest of the people gathered in the booth, then asked, "Where's Rogue?"

"Right here, Sugah."

It had come from behind him.

On the other side of the glass, Rogue hovered and beamed with pleasure. She blew him a kiss and… Her smile faltered. She dropped, sack of potatoes, in screaming alarm.

"Rogue!"

Frightened, Bobby pressed himself to the glass to watch her fall. He only glimpsed her terrified expression for an instant before the sharp angle of his view obscured it from him. From the countless lectures he'd been forced to sit through before being allowed to use it, he knew it was a good 200-foot descent from monitor window to Danger Room floor. Its depth/height was allotted for flyers practice in a multitude of possibly imagined as well as experienced scenarios. That knowledge was enough to send Bobby racing out through the adjoining door and down the stairs to the Danger Room's primary entrance.

* * *

"Welcome, gentleman," Erik said in grand stately greeting of outspreading hands. The gesture prompted them to observe the bounty offered in the room. Metal gleamed, polished and refined, for all surfaces, be it walls, ceiling, floors, fixtures, desk, etc. There was little decoration. No pictures or art of any kind. It was clean, stark, streamlined, and reeked of utility, even in the low light that barely hindered the deep muddy shadows in the corners. From out of one of those shadowed corners emerged a withered, soft leathery hand requesting a shake.

Cain Marko took one look at the proffered hand then grunted at the speaker. "This the grandma and grandpa league?"

Irene's voice escaped the shadows a moment before the rest of her did. "You attract such contumacious people." Off Cain's expression, she added. "Ah, yes, I'd forgotten. No big words around this one." She parried her cane towards Erik. "You must be so proud, Magneto."

"You're Magneto?" Cain asked with apparent disbelief.

"Sit," Erik demanded through gritted teeth.

"Senile old fart," Cain muttered. "Yours is the only—"

The metal floor pulled up like taffy and nudged at the back of both Cain and Cortez's thighs. The ringed edges dribbled higher to caress their back and arms. The metal siphoned again, thinner, finer. It wrapped their forearms and YANK! They were seated.

"—chair."

"I _am_ Magneto," Erik boasted in his lordly manner. "And you two, Cain, Cortez, are now my Acolytes."

"Quicksilver recruited us for the Brotherhood of Mutants." They were Cortez's first obstinate words to Erik.

"Genetics made you that," Erik said. "Choice made you mine."

"Choice," Irene scoffed.

"Who's the crotchety crone, anyways?" Cain's crudity.

"Irene Adler," she stated with disgust. "Though, I trust the spirals of fates that I never hear you utter it before your last spill of breath."

"Damn, you sure pissed her right off." Cortez seemed a bit enamored of that perception of his.

"Double for you," she told him.

"Ooh, scary," Cain mock-cooed. "I'm the unstoppable juggernaut," he said and stood, snapping the metal bindings like they were matchsticks, "Nothing you can do can hurt me."

Irene rolled her eyes.

"Hurt you?" Proposed Erik. "She is Destiny. She porters war on the horizon. And for that, we congregate and we empower and we will win."

"You do that," Irene said on her way out. "I'll be in my room having tea." The door closed, but she stopped it with her cane to let in the parting, "I won't come running when you scream."

"Like you _could_ run," Cain said, amusing himself.

* * *

Rogue's scream tapered off quickly. It wasn't as nearly terrifying a fall as when the wind had torn her from her seat of the Blackbird. Plus, even if the flight power was gone, the invulnerability could still possibly, maybe be lingering.

Logan wasn't about to assume that, however. He made a dash for her. Even if he couldn't catch her in time, he'd be ready with a bare hand to heal her. If only he could do that for anyone he had a care for. In his wake, Nightcrawler disappeared in a wash of black acrid smoke and the familiar Bamf! In complete opposition of their urgent responses, the final occupant of the Danger Room, Gambit, remained as he was before she had risen up on stolen-mutant will alone to surprise her mundane—in Remy's opinion—boyfriend.

Blasé. That was the word for Gambit as Rogue plummeted. He leaned against the wall. His booted foot was hiked up against it as well, just beside the opposite knee. He shuffled his cards as lackadaisically as sipping lemonade on the back porch on a lazy summer day. He peaked, with the mere slightest curiosity, between strands of that cinnamon and marmalade hair of his.

A few steps into his sprint, Logan stopped and titled his head to pick out an… unexpected… sound he was sure he was hearing.

Gambit chuckled. "She's giggling, _mon ami_."

Bamf! Nightcrawler appeared and reached for her, poised for the expectant crash of her weight into his.

It never came.

Hands on hips, head high and confident and split with a wide-open grin, Rogue hovered in front of him. In full southern damsel-in-distress regalia, she exclaimed, "Mah hero!"

Stunned, Kurt forgot he was about seventy-five feet up. Gravity tugged at him.

"On second thought..." Woosh! Rogue darted and scooped him up in her arms. "I think I stole your line."

"You were joking?" Kurt asked as she lowered them.

"Gotcha," she said with a wink and set him on his feet.

The door burst open with a spill of ice. Bobby slid out on it and skidded to a stop. Hands thrust ahead of him frosted the air, froze it. Slush appeared, hardened solid and slick into a creeping, rolling sweep that dripped supports to the floor. He jumped on it even as he built it, extended it, and slid, slid, slid…

"Gotcha too," Rogue said as she swooped up, snagged him mid-slide, and twirled him around. Holding him close, breathless with pleasure, she whispered to him, "Guess who's sticking around awhile?"

"Put me down," Bobby said. It was quiet, and not at all happy.

Rogue frowned. "Sure thing, Sugah." She surely hadn't expected _this_ reaction. "It was just a joke, Bobby," Rogue added in a mixture of condescension and placation once they were standing steady. "No harm done."

"It wasn't funny," Bobby said. He was clearly perturbed, yes, but something about his expression told her it wasn't all directed at her.

Gambit pushed off the wall and pocketed his cards. "I thought it was."

"Well, Bub, you're opinion don't count," Logan said gruffly.

From the speakers recessed along the walls of the Danger Room came a jumble of voices saying, "Is that the button?"—"Jubilee, don't touch that!"—" It _is_ the right button!"—" It's all right, Storm." And finally thinned to only the firecracker known as Jubilation Lee, who said, "Woah, Bobby! Since when could you do _that_? 'Cause, dude, this weekend, you, pool, super-cool slide! Hey, stop Kitty! Get your own mic. This one's mine."

A moment later, Kitty's head poked through the observation booth's glass. The rest of her followed and she air-walked her way down to the inhabitants of the Danger Room. "Rogue, that was…" Her expression sank. "Bobby…?" She solidified only a step or two away from him. "Your hand." She reached for it. "It's—"

Rogue—worry, worry, worry—caught Kitty's arm. "Don't touch him." Worry. Worry. Worry.

"Looks like glass," Gambit said and tapped it with the end of his bo/staff. Nobody had even seen him telescope it to full length let alone pull it out from one of the many pockets on his trench coat.

Rogue shoved him back with a protective, "You either."

Gambit raised his arms in a show of surrender. "As the lady wishes." He winked.

"Can you see this, X?" Logan asked up towards the booth. "His hand is solid ice."

Over the speakers: "I'm zooming in on the monitors now."

Rogue met Bobby's strained and confused and… curious gaze. "Does it hurt?"

"No," he answered. "It feels… right."

* * *

"It doesn't feel right."

Emma adjusted the choker. It seemed tighter than usual. "I don't like it either, but with this much invested already, it's too late to pull out. Frost Inc. is willing to go half on the additional costs, but no more. Worthington Industries will have to take up the rest."

"Two million more is still a lot, Ms. Frost."

"Warren…" she purred. She trailed her glossed nails from the choker down the edge of her plunging neckline of her icy-white suit jacket. "I've told you several times now…" She uncrossed and re-crossed her legs. "Call me Emma."

He quirked an incredulous eyebrow at her mild seduction attempt.

"Always worth the try." She snapped back to seriousness. "How is Elizabeth these days? Any success at Muir Island?"

"MacTaggart recommended a specialist for telepathy. Right here in NY. Westchester."

"Charles Xavier."

_Was that a flicker of alarm?_ "You've heard of him?" _Did the etched face on the cameo just flinch?_

The telepath's hand went straight to the cameo. "I make it a virtue to know the competition."

"I thought he operated a school."

"That is one of his investments, yes." She pressed the intercom button on her phone. "Amara, some refreshments. Have Jennifer bring them. Spring water… And some chips." She didn't wait for a response. Back to Warren, she said. "Though not as official as he, I have students of my own."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but the idea of you being a mentor to children is a frightening thought."

"Oh, I take that a very high compliment, indeed. Surprises are better when they are unexpected." She stood and walked around behind him, dragging his gaze with her. "But sometimes forewarning sets the nerves all a flutter and buzzing." She drummed her fingers up his shoulder. "Makes the anticipation all the more delicious."

He was tempted to shrug off her hand. More so, he was determined not to play her game, not to give her the benefit of his suspicion, so he turned away from her as though the action equated ignoring her. One part testimonial and two parts indictment, he asked her, "Always the predator, aren't you?"

"Better than being the prey," Emma said as she tapped a very specific spot on his neck just behind his ear. Goosebumps spread out from that spot as though her touch had frozen a nerve ending there, had tipped it fine, silvery, and crystalline.

He shooed her hand away and clutched for that spot when a knock on the door distracted him.

"Come in," Emma said as she retreated behind her desk.

Warren split his attention between Emma and the entrance of a slender young woman with blonde frizzy hair, and hip, stylish, yet somewhat petulant dress and demeanor. Her smile was haughty as she carried the silver tray in such a way that Warren could as of yet only see two perspiring bottles of water on it. The frosty sensation diminishing at his neck made him wish she'd brought something hot to drink. Then again, he doubted he'd be drinking anything Emma had her bring.

Emma smiled viciously, but brilliantly. "Warren Worthington the third, meet Jennifer Stavros," she introduced as she reclaimed her seat. "Her father ran a very successful casino in Las Vegas. When she was fifteen he refused her query to go skiing in the French Alps with some friends. Two months later he filed bankruptcy. For some reason, every customer had an inexplicable stunning winning streak. Good luck for them. Bad luck for him."

"You're a luck mutant?" Warren asked.

"Probabilities, really," Jennifer explained. Her tone belied the modesty of her choice of words. "A modest tip of the statistics scale."

He doubted there was anything modest to either of these women. Back to Emma, Warren asked, "That's how your ventures succeed? Her?" It was cautious, yet disbelieving. He was used to being such a powerful man among ordinary boardroom types. "I thought it was just the telepathy."

"A leaky faucet may make a puddle," Emma said, "But Roulette here makes sure someone slips in it."

Jennifer/Roulette set the silver platter on the desk.

"And that's my incentive to cough up more money for Diamond?" He shook his head and chuckled ruefully. "It's not about guaranteeing their success. It's about what they are doing at all. Elizabeth's problems started right after we last met with Essex. And, his Congressional Committee partner, Dr. Henry McCoy, if you just happened to miss all the news lately, has turned up missing."

Surrounding the two perspiring bottles of water on the silver platter was a splay of poker chips, alternating red, green, yellow and black, like circles of tripped dominoes.

"I never said the guarantee was for you," Emma said, slithery as a snake.

Roulette scooped up a handful of the chips—ruining their pleasant, orderly display—and shuffled them from one hand to another. She tossed one to Warren with a wink and asked, "Are you a gambling man, Mr. Worthington?"

He caught it out of reflex, but dropped it like it scalded him.

"Since you put it that way…" He stood, removed his tailored suit jacket, revealing a series of leather straps crossing his chest and circling behind his back. A yank on two clips at his waist and the straps fell loose. By the time his wings stretched and flexed, shaking free of the straps, he was stepping up onto the opened window ledge. "…I must decline."

Woosh! He flew the coop.

"Well," Emma said, "I supposed I should have closed that window after all."

"Aww," Roulette pouted, "But then I'd have no fun." She picked up the chip Warren had discarded. It was black.

"Enjoy," Emma said as though it mattered naught.

Roulette rubbed her thumb over the raised diamond insignia in purposeful concentration. Then, she tossed the chip out the window and watched it leave her sight. Though she could not see it, she had felt it when it smacked into the ground. Cheeks flushed, eyes twinkling, she looked back at Emma and exclaimed, "What a rush."

* * *

"He declined the sedative," Hank said as Xavier wheeled into the medlab with Rogue at his side. "He wants to think clearly."

"Understandable," Xavier responded.

Jono watched without enthusiasm. _"Four down, only …"_ he started counting on his fingers. He gave up after the third round of ten and flicked his hands like waving off some flies. He sat up on one elbow and offered a hand to Bobby, who laid on the bed to his right. _"Welcome to the club."_

Bobby tucked his hand out of reach and looked away bitterly. Storm patted his shoulder then joined Xavier, Hank, and Rogue in the center of the medlab.

"Can I see him?" Rogue asked the approaching Storm.

"Give him a little time," she answered honestly.

"Is he going to be okay?"

Storm looked to Hank in deferment, but apparently answers weren't coming quickly enough.

"Is it like frostbite?" Rogue persisted. "I mean… could he lose his hand or something?"

"Until we do some tests, I won't know anything, for sure," Hank answered with subdued melancholy.

"You could do something to speed up the process," Xavier said pointedly to Rogue. Intelligence, suspiciousness went unvoiced, but she got the point. Incentive.

She plucked two hairs from her head, one white, one brown, and gave them to Storm. "Same as after Liberty Island?"

Xavier nodded, paternal, almost hen-ish, even.

She rolled up her sleeve. Then, she held out her bared arm. "Who's doing the honors this time."

"We've made do," Storm said to Hank, "but you're the professional here. Mind?"

McCoy answered with the hesitancy of a momentary pause stuffed full of uncertainty, unease, and more.

Xavier spoke up. "You could rescue us just as we rescued you."

"That's almost exactly what I said about Remy last night."

Xavier smiled. "You are wise."

Hank grinned, a bright and shiny—and fangy—contrast to his beastly features. "I am honored."

Storm readied a needle for drawing blood as he put on a pair of latex gloves. He took the needle from Storm and firmly grasped Rogue's forearm. Then he paused.

"I'm afraid I have no lollipops with which to reward you."

"Darn!" Rogue mocked amicably. "And I just had my sweet tooth installed."

He pressed the tip to the oh-so-delicate looking skin at the inner bend of her elbow and inser—

Ping!

The needle broke. Thankfully, it didn't pierce anyone in its unexpected flight.

"Heh," Rogue said coyly. "I guess bulletproof means needle proof too."

"This does pose a unique dilemma, doesn't it?"

"_Could always fetch Logan to do it_," Jono suggested.

"You're not helping," Storm warned.

"_What? Not like she couldn't touch him and heal right up afterwards."_

"I don't think that will be necessary, will it, Remy?" It was Xavier.

"S'posed t' be immune t' telepaths," Remy said as he stepped inside. "How y' do it?"

"Shouldn't you be asking yourself that?" Xavier held out his hand to greet his approach. "You were projecting it, after all."

"That so?" Gambit asked. "Interesting, _n'est-ce pas_?" He didn't press the topic further. Instead, he dipped his hands into one of his pockets. A flick of his wrist and two ordinary looking needles appeared in his fingertips. He dropped them into Xavier's upturned palm.

Xavier examined them, particularly, the shiny metal pricking points. "Adamantium, I take it?"

"That's convenient," Logan groused as he entered. He'd been following closely behind Remy. "But if you ask me, my claws would be the safer route."

Rogue rolled her eyes. "I've got enough of you in me already."

Logan's jaw muscle twitched as memories of Mystique surfaced and he suddenly wasn't so keen on the idea himself anymore. Especially when he noticed Rogue was tempering down a near blush. More so even when Xavier frowned, grimaced almost.

Amused with everything and nothing, Remy reached to snatch back the needles. "If you don't want them I could always get a pretty penny somewhere else."

Xavier's fingers snapped closed around them. "We'll need a reliable sterilization process first. I have a feeling we'll need them again."

"That or you could just raid another military base."

"We don't raid anything," Storm said. "We rescue people."

Gambit shrugged and titled his head in Danvers' direction. "Sure she'll see it that way?"

Rogue looked to Danvers—still unconscious—and then to her gloved hands. She hurriedly pulled down her sleeves, covered up all that poisonous skin, all except her face, which was writ with so much under that hardening wit she'd been earning since that fateful afternoon with David in her bedroom. She glanced at Bobby who still tried to block them all out.

"Smooth, Cajun," Logan said. "Smooth."

"She packing some serious heat," Gambit said without remorse. "Ain't nothing t' be ashamed of." He swung those smoldering embers that were his eyes in Rogue's direction, and the atmosphere of the room thickened, sizzled… charged. But the explosion wouldn't be physical. "Y' hear me, _chére_?"

"I-I'm heading back to the Danger Room. Fetch me when you're ready." She paused at the door as if she'd forgotten something. "I'll see you later, Bobby."

* * *

**End Chapter 02 of 05.**  
(Anticipate daily, possibly even quicker, updates.)

**Next Chapter: **"Count me out," Jubilee supplied without a hint of shame. "I'm not fond of traction."

* * *

_Edited, tweaked, added to: May 7, 2006  
Edited, tweaked, added to: May 14, 2006  
Posted May 25, 2006_

_

* * *

**Footnote:**_

I let Moira's slang get the best of her in one bit of dialogue. I couldn't help myself. But, since it's likely very few of you could understand it within the context of the story, I will translate here. First, here's the entire bit of dialogue.

"Aye, it does. And more," she continued, more and more upset. "An awfy peely-wally bairn sure does bugger a canny campaign to pure mince. Except for the occasional media opportunity, he's not been round to see Kevin in over a month now. Not since the new wife came up expecting."

_Awfy peely-wally bairn_ very sick kid.

_Translation overall_ Kevin is sick, and it's in connection to his mutation. And though his politician father uses pro-mutant propaganda for his campaign over in Scotland, a sick kid with a not-so-easily-publicly-pretty mutation gets in the way of that very same crafty campaign. So, his father has hooked up with a more poster-worthy mutant family, and is about to have what he hopes is a poster-worthy mutant son, to whom he now gives all of his attention. This is something that upsets Kevin, which thus, makes his illness and mutation problems worse.

Whew! There ya go! (I've obviously taken my own liberties with characters just as the movie writers have. Hehe.)

* * *

_Thank you for indulging._


	3. Chapter 3 of 5 Not Fond of Traction

**Review Responses:**

**Jason: ** I've already talked to you about your lovely comments but I still had to acknowledge you here. Thank you. I am so glad that even a newbie to the X-Men universes (relatively speaking) can enjoy this story. :Hugs:

**Lovestoread: **So you like this one even more? Yaay! This one is definitely more along the genre of mystery/suspense than the first part, which, though it had those nuances as well, was more of an adventure thing. Perhaps, that is what intrigues you more on this one. If it is… well… then there's a good chance you'll just like this and each of it's subsequently following parts even more. :D I sure hope so!

**Ishandahalf:** Here's more randifix for ya! Hehe. I'm glad you're liking the characterizations. And you were right about the Bobby/Kitty moments. They're hormonally driven teenagers, so perhaps that is all it will turn out to be… but perhaps there is more. You'll just have to wait and see. Hehe. And can I tell you how jealous I am that you're seeing X3 already! I have to wait until next week, Monday at the earliest. For now, I have to suffice with feeding that particular fix with the mere working on this story. I'm a few chapters ahead of where I've yet posted. It's why I can update so fast. Lol. And as for your computer solution… I'm pulling for ya. If those chapters of yours are salvaged, your savior will need some rewards from me too. :D

Furthermore… Thank you Kou Shun'u and Ludi ( :hugs: ) for your comments on Part One. Thank you Gynx8 and Rogue87 for putting this on alert. Thank you IndependentFire for adding it to your faves. And of course, thank you to all who read without leaving reviews as well. The increasing hits excite me almost as much as reviews do. :D

And now… some Danger Room action to go along with the intrigue.

* * *

**Chapter Three**

Essex buzzed through security footage on one of the monitors. Several of the monitors were paused already, others were playing at normal pace, three were opened to various programs and databases, and one, the one directly in front of him, was opened to a list he was currently compiling. The cursor tabbed to the next line marked 'sample one' and he typed 'blood, North Wing, third corridor.' The name of the entry matched with images on three of the other monitors. One match was a database program titled 'Access Stryker.' A second was a database headed, 'Relay Gambit.' The third was a still of a security recording. The face on it belonged to one Scott Summers, aka Cyclops.

He pondered the lines and lines of Scott's genetic sequencers on the main monitor. The most complex code to some, but it was a language he knew well, like cherished poetry. A few key phrases of this particular poem kept drawing his attention over and over again until, snap, just like that, he made a connection. Well, at the moment, it was merely only the possibility of one, really. To confirm his suspicions he closed Scott's file on Access Stryker and opened a new one. He skimmed past the basic specs and history of Grey, Jean until he reached her genetic mapping. He aligned the two maps, hers and his, and grinned, sinister as the one that topped his cane. He'd need to run a few simulations to be sure of it, but for the moment, the possibility of what he discovered would surely infuse his work with more vigor for weeks to come. If the sims were correct, then the coupling of these two mutants would produce offspring of such power that, to bend such to his will, could quite literally grant him a new lease on life.

He calmed himself as he jotted notes of the sims' designs. Getting overzealous this early on could lead to biased results, and he knew well enough, that such would be a fool's errand. Patience and fortitude would be required of him for this exciting new venture.

He shrunk one of the other database files, one that depicted comparisons between Danvers, Rogue, Kitty, Bobby, Gambit, Sabretooth and Wolverine in various combinations—interestingly so, but minuscule compared to this new beacon—and opened the program 'Tag.' He scrolled quickly through the listed specimens, past Creed and Danvers, to Forge's file, on which he right clicked, and selected 'Summon.' Be it arrogance or experience or equipment reliability, he clicked 'no' when it asked 'track' and closed the program. He simply expected Forge to acquiesce promptly.

"Damn it, Essex!" Trask hollered via the speaker-com. "Give some warning next time. Forge damn near took out my eye with the welding torch."

"That's too bad," Essex mused, and Trask got the distinct impression he'd planned it otherwise. "Still, if it's not too much trouble, spare a moment from playing grease monkey with my specimen and remit him to me directly."

He pressed mute on the speaker-com, though the blinking red light of it spoke of the military man's continued ranting. Essex cared nothing of it. He finished his notes for the Summers-Grey sims then closed their file. He was not the least bit remissed to the translucent, large, bold font that spirited 'Deceased' across the bulk of the text of Access Stryker's Grey file. He merely returned to continuation of logging the mutant intruders from the previous night. He picked up the slide containing a single white hair along with the print out beneath it. A quick scan of both and he paused two of the video monitors on a different female face each.

A sample to a face…

He'd already connected other hairs as belonging to one mutant known only as Rogue in the database called Access Stryker, so he resumed the video that freeze-framed on her face. That left only one other white haired female among the center's recent uninvited guests.

A face to a name…

He set the printout's gene sequence as the 'constant' on another screen. A few keystrokes. Storages opened. He dragged them into the 'search' window. Randomly ordered sequences of archived mutants scrolled speedily beneath the 'constant'. Though the comparison program would run automatically until it identified a direct or familiar—usually that of a blood relative—match, he still attended it. Such things mesmerized him, after all. His life's work. It made him worthy.

Bzzzzt!

It wasn't a match found.

Bzzzzt!

It wasn't Forge's anticipated approach.

Bzzzzt!

It wasn't Malice checking in.

Bzzzzt!

But, he suspected she'd revel in the news of what it actually was.

STATUS COMPLETE. It flashed across the console that fronted the cylinder Kitty had mentioned in passing when the X-Men had raided and rescued the estranged Dr. Henry 'Hank' McCoy.

* * *

"Objective Complete," announced the control room computer.

"Good, Rogue," Storm said into the microphone. "How you holding up?"

On the other side of the monitoring window, at just about eye level, Rogue gave a thumbs-up. Through the speakers, they heard her say, "Just dandy. Tossing it."

And she did just that. She tossed the fully filled cement truck she held one handed above her head as she hovered at about 100 feet. A short distance before it would have careened with the window to the control booth it dissolved into pixilated nothingness. It was an interactive holographic simulation after all.

"Can I try out something for real now?" Rogue asked as she dusted off her hands.

"Yeah, right," grunted Logan from where he watched at floor level.

"Fine," Rogue huffed. "But can we move on to something else. This lifting stuff is getting old quick." She glanced through the window at the control booth's occupants. "Can't be entertaining for the peanut gallery either." She referred to Kitty, Piotr, Jubilee and a faint shape nestled deep behind them that she assumed was the newcomer/prisoner, Gambit. "Must be slim pickings for ya'll to be watching this boring exhibition."

Jubilee's mouth moved, that much she could detect, but she wasn't close enough to the mics to be heard.

Storm ignored them and asked over the intercom, "What do you think, Logan?"

He grimaced as he thought about it. "I don't know." He glanced up at Rogue's pleading face. "You're a little too eager. It's how people end up hurt."

Rogue rolled her eyes at him and huffed again, billowing a loosened lock of white hair. "Invulnerable, remember?"

"But the equipment isn't," he countered. "And neither are the rest of us."

"You'll heal," she counter-countered. "Or are you chicken?"

"Bok-b-b-bok-bok!" It came from the speakers. Jubilee had jubilantly nabbed one of the microphones again. Dimly, more distanced, came her meager excuse, "Oh please! Like I have the willpower to pass that up," as Stormed shooed her back from the console. Snickers from the some of the other control room inhabitants filled the background.

"Besides," Rogue tittered. "Wouldn't it be better for me to know my limits _before_ I go back in the field? That's what ya'll always say, isn't it?"

"Smart ass," Logan grunted.

Rogue smirked in victory. Experience—and other things—had taught her that, with Logan, that was as good as an assent.

"But I'm chaperoning," he added. Calling up to the booth, he asked, "Any takers?"

"Maybe some programmed opponents first," Storm slipped in before anyone could answer.

Rogue groaned. "Do ya'll practice ways to irritate me? If it's not one against me, it's the other."

"I'm not saying no," Storm appealed. "I'm just suggesting a one-on-one combat scenario with the emergency safeties in place. The computer will automatically disengage if an impact meets too little resistance."

"Ugh!" It was the closest they'd ever seen to Rogue throwing a tantrum. "That's my whole point!"

Logan didn't like it. He liked it less when it quieted into something darker… thirstier… hungrier… something reminiscent of him.

"I want to tumble with something _real_."

In the booth, Piotr stepped forward. Organic metal slithered across him, replacing his very skin. "She won't hurt me."

Kitty stepped clear through him like a ghost. "Me either."

"Count me out," Jubilee supplied without a hint of shame. "I'm not fond of traction." She popped her gum at the last inhabitant of the room. "What about you, Mister-tall-dark-and-too-mysterious-to-join-in?"

In reply, said mister flashed a wicked grin. "Always up for a tumble with a feisty _belle_ _femme_."

"Ooh," Jubilee taunted. "Bobby's not going to like you." She swung a leg out at the now solid Kitty. "Bet you'd like that, though, wouldn't you, miss kitty?"

Kitty whipped her an oh-my-God-shut-up-already look.

"Oh," Jubilee said and popped her gum again. "Sorry, Kit-Kat. Forgot. Not in front of the Russian crush."

Kitty's blush would've been darker if she hadn't gone ghostly and sunk out of sight.

"My work is done," Jubilee announced proudly as she stood. "Catch you all later." She left.

Oddly, once the outer doors closed, only two people remained in the booth.

* * *

"Can't we do this later?" Bobby asked. He still wouldn't face even the Professor.

To his side, Jono tried to pretend he couldn't hear. The still unconscious Major Danvers didn't have to pretend at all. Neither did Hank. At first he had to, but it hadn't taken long for his project of securing a reliable, repeatable and accessible recycling/sterilization process for the adamantium-needled syringes to consume his total focus.

"It is important that you share this with us," Xavier pressed in a soothing, non-confrontational tone.

"I don't know why you're making such a big deal about it. It's not like I'm the first mutant to have problems with their powers."

"But it hasn't happened to you before, has it?" Xavier waited for his answer, but he didn't get it in words. He stifled the tiny gasp that came with the realization. "It has."

"I'm not the only one, you know," Bobby defended.

"That's a juvenile excuse. I expected more from you."

"Yeah, well, I'm still a kid. Isn't that what you're always reminding me?"

"You handled your initial manifestations so well. I want to help make this transition progress as smoothly."

"Fat chance of that happening."

"_You're not getting it, Professor,"_ Jono piped in from the sidelines.

"Enlighten me, then, please."

Bobby flashed Jono a glare.

"_Piss off!"_ Jono griped. _"Like you said, you're not the only bloke going through it."_ To Xavier, he said, _"People will see. Can't just blend in anymore."_

Finally, Bobby faced Xavier. "Ronnie called the cops when I froze some tea. What will he do when he sees me freeze _me_?"

"_Do it in Antarctica,"_ Jono blurted sarcastically. _"You make the igloo and freeze up some tea. I'll bring the biscuits. We'll be the rave of the whole population."_

Xavier shot Jono a warning look.

Though it's not so easy to do when using telepathy, Jono tagged on a mumbling, loud enough to be heard, barely. _"Gotta be better than being stuck down here."_

Xavier ignored him and told Bobby, "I can't answer that." He couldn't help but think of Callisto, Marrow, and the other Morlocks. "But, whatever it is, _we_ will see _you_ through it."

"Whatever," Bobby said snidely. Though, the sarcasm was thin. "Can I go now?"

"Permit Dr. McCoy to run some tests first."

Reluctantly, Bobby nodded. "Whatever."

"_Hey, what about me?"_ Jono. _"I've been here longer and I don't even have a girlfriend to kiss my wounded mug."_ He winced soon as he said it. _"Sorry."_

Bobby shrugged. "I'm used to it." But something about the way he said it implied a lie to it.

"Same deal," Xavier said to Jono. Regarding them both, he glanced at the geneticist-turned-beast. "But, it's McCoy's call."

* * *

"_Kurt,"_ came Xavier's telepathic call.

Nightcrawler completed his flip on the tree branches and swooped to a crouched landing met with great applause.

"_Ja_, Professor?"

"_Am I interrupting something important?"_

"_Nien_. I'm just entertaining of few of the kids."

"Do a triple flip this time!"

"No! Do a triple lindey!"

"That's not real. It's from a movie!"

"So, I bet Nightcrawler could do it!"

"_So, I hear."_ There was amusement lilting it. _"If you can tear yourself away from them, I have a favor to ask of you."_

"Be right there," he answered Xavier. Then, he flashed the kids a devilish grin, did a triple back flip, and landed in a magnificent pose. "That's all for today." He told them with a ruffle of one kids hair. "_Tschüs!_"

* * *

Bamf!

"_Guten tag_!"

Storm nearly slipped her wits.

He gave a bashful tilt of his head in apology. "Xavier wants you to meet him at Cerebro."

"Okay," She answered. "I'll wrap it up." She reached for the microphone.

"No need." He stopped her with a gentle grasp of her hand. "That's why he sent me."

"Thanks." She stood, readying to leave. "Logan's got a handle on things down there. Just keep a watch on the safeties. He also wants Remy to do a run next. Record it for the Professor and Scott to see later."

"When should I expect him?"

"You don't have to wait around for Scott."

"No, I mean Remy."

"Remy? He's right—" She looked around the control room. "—here." Only she, Kurt, and Colossus inhabited the space. "Where'd he go?"

Colossus also scanned the area and frowned. "I will find him." He exited before Storm did.

Nightcrawler took the controls. He activated the intercom and announced, "I'm taking over for Storm."

* * *

"I changed my mind," Logan said, loud enough for the intercom to pick it up. "That's all for today."

"What? Why?" Rogue sunk to his level.

"Why do you think?"

"I think Sabretooth was right. You _are_ going soft."

Logan shook his head. "You don't want to do this."

"Yes," she said with a confident thrust of her chin, "I do."

"No," he reiterated pointedly, "_You_ don't." And yet, louder, a command, he hollered, "Computer, run program, Creed three. Safety protocol Colossus."

The air itself appeared as though it pixilated around her until SNAP! Snow underfoot. Forest filled in on either side. A truck crashed into a felled tree. Then, SNARL! ROAR! A simulation of Sabretooth sizzled into formation in mid-leap at _her_ back, not Logan's.

She rolled when he hit her and balled her fists. But, that's where she faltered, she flinched, she hesitated to spare an accusatory/betrayed glower at Logan, and it was enough to get tackled by Sabretooth again. This time there was no roll just his spittle in her face and his claws at her gut and her knee shot up and kicked him off of her. She was flying at him before he was up again, but before she could pummel him—

"Computer, cut! Run program, Liberty Island."

Rogue halted her flight to a hover and waited as the snow melted into gray slush that hardened into brushed steel. The trees reached for each other, tangled, and closed in. The bark flaked away to reveal the brushed steel there as well, and the branches drew apart, wrapped up and around from underneath her like a cup. Rogue was now trapped in Magneto's device again.

Rogue grunted, a stubborn stunting of a scream, and yanked herself free of the contraption. She dug her fingers into one of the rotating circlets, the metal giving like clay, tore it free and swung it like a bat into the other one. Bam! She let them both fly off to dissolve before impacting the wall and ceiling of the danger room. Smack! Crunch! She punched one fist than the other into the heart of the machine, right between her feet.

"Computer, run program, Alkali: Replaced. Force times ten."

Yuriko's knee caught her chin and snapped her up and back and she landed on her back on metal grating. Wham! Slam! Yuriko landed a moment later. Whom! The grating rattled. Ten adamantium fingernail knives sprung, slow, luxuriant. Whomm! The grating rattled. Yuriko struck with her right hand. Rogue grabbed it.

"Computer, force times twenty!"

Whommm! The grating rattled. Rogue struggled against Yuriko's press, but held it. Yuriko struck with her left hand. Rogue grabbed it.

"Force times thirty!"

"Logan?" The mild concern threaded through the speaker. "All sorts of lights are blinking up here."

"I got it, Elf," Logan called back.

Yuriko pressed. Rogue lost an inch, two, three... Whommmm! The grating rattled. She bit her lip, rolled her wrist, shoved Yuriko's right hand aside. Sparks. Fingernail knives cut the chain clean through. The grating rattled. Whommmmm! The chain whipped.

"Force times fifty!"

"Warning! Warning! Warning!" The computer alerted. "Force levels exceeding recommended safety protocols: Colossus."

"I'm shutting it down," Kurt relayed.

"Override," Logan all but growled. "Load safety protocol: Wolverine."

Sweat beaded on both women as they wrangled each other chest to chest, left hand to left forearm, and outstretched right arms in mirrored clutches. Yuriko grinned, spiteful, joyful, ravenous, and pushed with her left hand. Whommmmmm! The grating rattled. The chain whipped. The nail-knives inched forward.

"Computer, force times seventy-five! Safety: Berzerker!"

Rogue's eyes widened. Whommmmmmm! The grating rattled. The chain whipped. Knives reached. Rogue twisted, spared her face, but bared neck. Whommmmmmmm! The grating rattled. The chain whipped. Rogue's hands twitched, slipped. Blades. Touch. Bend. Red.

"Disengaging," Kurt announced of his own volition. He didn't understand what just went on down there.

Yuriko, the chains, the grating, all of it pixilated and dissolved so abruptly Rogue thumped to the floor. She sat up, wiped her neck and found her hand smudged with crimson.

"See, I still bleed," Rogue said angrily. "You still get to be the big protector. Happy?"

"Disappointed," Logan said and sounded it.

She flinched as if struck. Recovering, she clenched her jaw, a very Logan-like habit. "Yeah, I know. I'll never be Jean." She stomped up to him. "But you know what?" She leaned into him, her bare face close. Very close.

…And he leaned back.

She smirked, point proven. "I don't want to be." She flew through the doors, up the stairs, and out the control room.

"What was that all about?" Kurt asked through the microphone.

"Running. Hiding," Logan said. "The usual." He looked up into the booth. "Where's the Cajun?"

* * *

Gambit strolled down the brightly lit underground corridor. Hydraulics sounded ahead, the medlab door was opening, and out wheeled Xavier. He turned right, heading for the big round room at the end of the hall. Cerebro. But, he halted, paused, and wheeled to look behind him. He stared, nonplussed at first, then placidly, at the empty hall. Turning back around, he returned to his previous course of action.

A moment later, Gambit peaked around the corner. He watched Xavier reach the sealed round door. He saw the flicker of light it projected. He heard the feminine computer voice greet, "Welcome, Professor." He made mental notes of it all.

* * *

"_So, we can go, right?"_ Jono asked as McCoy labeled the final vial of drawn blood.

McCoy swirled the liquid in the vial. Fascinated.

"_Right?"_ Jono persisted.

McCoy jolted from his focused thoughts. "I've not completed all the tests yet."

Bobby and Jono shared a conspiratorial look.

"But you checked the basics," Bobby said.

"_Blood pressure, heart rate, reflexes, pupil dilation..."_ Jono. They were double teaming him.

"It's all normal." Bobby again.

"_Come onnnn."_ Jono drew it out. Made it a 'you're-on-our-side-right?' kind of plea/whine. Then he changed his tactics. _"It's because I'm British, isn't it?"_

McCoy frowned at him.

"_I knew it. It IS because I'm British." _ Off McCoy's harsher look, he gave up the jig. _"Alright, alright. But, seriously. You can't really want the two of us pestering you while you work."_

McCoy considered it critically and then sighed. "You can go."

They hopped up triumphantly.

"But," McCoy added before they escaped, "Nothing strenuous. Anything seems off, come directly here. Got it?"

"Gotcha," Bobby said.

"_Yup,"_ Jono seconded.

And they were gone.

Hank adjusted his spectacles and chuckled. "Teenagers."

"_Merci Dieu_ they grow out of it," Gambit said, startling McCoy. He hadn't heard him enter. The doors had only opened and closed once. "Least that's what _Tante Mattie_ always said every time Remy and his_ frère_ left a room." He sidled nearer; hopped up onto the counter beside the vials of blood drawn from Bobby and Jono. "Y' know, y' share the same name. Well, not exactly. We pronounce it _on-ree_. But, it's close enough, I suppose. Probably why I always liked y'. Why I got y' another pair of glasses when y'r first pair broke."

McCoy regarded Remy warily.

"They working out all right for y?"

McCoy sighed. "What do you want?"

"Oh, nothing much." He pulled out his cards and shuffled. He had a hunch McCoy had figured out that it meant he was calculating, strategizing… planning a gamble. But, he didn't mind. "Just a li'l checkup, is all."

* * *

"Something occurred to me," Xavier explained to Storm when she entered Cerebro, "That may just narrow the search criteria."

He was donning the headgear when he beckoned her closer.

"I need you to picture Caliban in your mind."

The doors closed behind them.

"That's it."

Points of red lights appeared on the world map.

"Keep thinking of him." He narrowed his focus on the purple edged ones in the vicinity of Seattle, Washington.

"Steady…"

* * *

"It's ready!" Malice gasped enthusiastically. The cameo figure was all a flutter.

* * *

"Steady…"

He zoomed closer.

"Isn't that the research center?"

"Yes," Xavier said. "Keep him clear in your mind."

* * *

"When can I…?" She didn't need to finish the question. Essex knew what she was asking.

"Soon as you give me good news regarding your assignment."

* * *

"There you are."

And there he was. Purple edged, tall, meaty, disfigured.

"He looks different," Storm said in evident concern.

* * *

"You got it," Malice blurted breathily.

"ETA?"

* * *

"I know," Xavier said.

"Then we're too late," she reasoned in frustration. Lightning clapped and thunder rumbled far above them. "We barely made it out of there the first time. If only we had known to look for him then."

"I know," Xavier said gravely. "They've likely upped their defenses. And we're low on resources."

* * *

"You want power," Cortez asked Erik. He raised his hands, palm out, at Erik. "I'll give you power."

It burst from his hands and Magneto screamed.

* * *

A spike, clear across the country, ripped Xavier's attention to it like a scream in his ear.

"Erik?" He wondered aloud, but the spike died down as quick as it hit. "What are you up to now?"

* * *

Mystique burst in through the door and kicked Cortez square in the back. His energy beam cut as he scrambled to break his face-first fall with his hands. That's when she landed on his back, heels squeezing his hips, knees digging for his kidneys, hand gripping his cheeks to twist—

"Wait," Magneto sputtered. "Leave him." He stood tall and sure and beaming. He was smiling, sure, but it was more than that. Magnetic energy roiled off of him in licks and peels. "Oh, I like you," He told Cortez and laughed heartily.

* * *

"Right," Malice told him in singular, "About," thriving, "Now," anticipation.

* * *

One of the other red pulses throbbed pink, red, pink, red. It clung close to even another red, dimming pulse. The second one seemed to have the faintest hint of purple to it, but before he could narrow in close enough to find out for sure, a telepathic cry gouged clear through the psychic plane and pierced into him with the force of a bullet-train.

"HELP!"

It knocked the wind out of him, to say the least.

* * *

The doorbell rang.

"I'll get it," Jubilee called out. Yanking the door open, she cheerfully greeted, "Welcome to Xavier's House of Freaks. No wax figures—"

A sort of Asian woman with purple hued hair struggled to support a barely standing bare-chested blond man with wings. Both were sodden. Water soaked their clothes clean through. Rain pounded down behind them.

"—allowed."

Lightning clapped. Thunder rumbled.

"I'm Betsy. This is Warren." Her voice was clipped, crisp, and accented British like Jono's, only more refined. It was a lot more demanding as well. "You people better be as good as Moira says."

Jubilee shook her head to clear the tiny pink butterflies she had to be imagining around Betsy's head. It was to no avail. She blinked. That didn't help either. Sure enough, there they still were, bubbling up like champagne. Not that Jubilee knew anything about champagne. She also didn't know much about gauging injuries on sight. She thought the man in front of her looked pretty bad off with those bruises and scratches and dried patches of blood that mottled his chest, arms, and face, but she could be wrong. So, she looked Betsy straight in the eyes and asked, "Long flight?"

"No, I took the Shadows-express." She crossed the threshold with Warren. "I bloody drove."

Jubilee peeked past them to see the blue-black 2005 Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, for which she let out, "Wow. Nice ride. It's fast, huh?"

"Faster than an ambulance," Betsy told her pointedly.

"Ah, yeah, that," Jubilee said. Having apparently successfully completed her patented security procedure of question-absurdly-until-firecracker-approved, she swung an arm out in welcome. "Well, come on in and blow your noisemaker, there's a party in the medlab and you two are invited."

* * *

**End Chapter 03 of 05.**

**Next Chapter: **"Gotta be pretty sneaky to hurt someone you can't even touch."

* * *

_Edited/rewritten May 15, 2006  
Edited/rewritten May 17, 2006  
Posted May 26, 2006_

_

* * *

_

_Thank you for indulging._


	4. Chapter 4 of 5 Can't Touch Can't Hurt

My sincere apologies for the delay in this update. Inconveniences sure know how to inconvenience a girl, you know?

As a token of my apology I offer the following:

**Reading Randi Tip 1:**  
Pay attention to the last few lines at the end of one segment and those that begin the one after it. There be some purposeful extra nuggets of theme, character psychology, ambiance and more situated betwixt them, and thus, illuminating them.

**Review responses:**

**Jason: **You are too adorable. There's a bit more Psylocke for you in this chapter. I hope it pleases you. CoughMizzMarvelCough. Hehe. :ruffles your hair:

**Irisheyesrsmiling: **I hope this suffices as good work. Don't want to disappoint. :D

**Ishandahalf: **I did finally get to see X3. I had many disappointments. I also had moments of reveling, too, though. Still, I'm hoping that later viewings of it will raise my overall opinion of it. I will say nothing more here so that I do not spoil it for anyone reading this that has yet to see it. I'm glad Essex has made such an impression on you. It means I was successful. Same with Jubes. :D I really did find it too easy and too fun to get side tracked with her. I could've had her go on and on and on. But, I had to keep control of this thing and reel her in nice and easy. Still, she'll have lots more fun in this and later parts. Regarding Logan and Rogue… I couldn't help but give the Rogan fans at least something to wet their pallets. I am a Romy fan at heart, but I definitely can see more there. Plus, well, the other stuff. They seem to be butting heads a lot, huh? Wonder what the tension is all from. Well, I know, but you'll have to keep reading to find out. I wonder how long I can draw it out for, hmmmm? Hehe. Gambit's sneakiness… here comes more of it. But then again… when isn't he sneaky? Lol. Oh, and again, uber apologies I didn't get this posted on schedule. Some minor catastrophes at home (omg, refrigerator/freezer broke!) put a kink in my plans for that. Better late than never, I suppose.

**Ludi: ** Wow, you caught up quick. Now I can thank you here for your commentary and not only in email. :D First off, might I again, thank you so much for your constant gracious offers to beta. I am well and truly honored that an author of your talent and stature would do such for me. Your comments are always so thorough. You give me great insight as to how the story is affecting you and that means the world to me. I'd address everything you said in your review, but alas, that would take much too long, so… a quickie (for me, at least) this be here and now. More will come in an email later this week. It tickles me to see how well you catch on to those nuances and developments that I work so hard to put in here. I also love hearing your speculations for where this will go. It lets me know how well my misdirections (hehe) are working. :D Regarding Jubilee, I agree. She is too good for any of the guys. :D And your analysis of Rogue/Logan in the Danger Room is spot on. Definitely billows my pride to know that I'm communicating it well. I will tell you this much… there's more to it than meets the initial eye. :D Hehe. Same can be said of your awareness of Rogue/Bobby/Gambit. Exploring and pushing the limits of all the connotations between them is definitely one of my favorite past times. I'm glad you're enjoying it. Thanks again. :holds some cards close:winks:

**Jabba1: **Omgoodness, how's my fellow old lady? Thank you so much for taking the time to leave your coments. Egads, we definitely need to get to talking about X3 since we've both seen it now. As for this story… if you think this is intriguing… well, it will increase exponentially before it culminates into the final climax. I so can't wait to see how you like it:hugs ya:

**Anamarie Chambers:** Yay! You're still reading! Now that you've told me what is catching your fancy on this I will be able to better exploit that… mwahhaha. Ahem. I do so love twisting the readers around. Hehe. Seriously though, it helps me to know where and what and how I may need to tweak future installments so that I can work towards soliciting exactly the reactions individual moments of this requires for it all to work out in the end. :D Gambit does always seem to have a good bead on her, doesn't he? I wonder if the reverse is true? Hmmm… Hehe. Yeah, You caught that contradiction in that Remy/Hank interaction. Yaay! There's more of it this chapter, so keep a look out. :D I hope I do not displease your expectations.

Thanks for the alert Allison chains, irisheyesrsmiling, and simba317! Woot, Simba! I wish I caught you on the movie-verse forum more. Hehe.

Thanks for the fave irisheyesrsmiling and Anamarie Chambers.

Thanks Angy and staff for adding this to your C2 "Romyness and all that other good X-Men stuff." I've always seen that community as like THE community to be added to. I am quite honored indeed. :D

Egads, I talk too much. :simpers: All of ya'll are uber awesome.

Now, on to chapter four!

* * *

**Chapter Four**

"Take off your shirt."

"Hey, now, Remy not into bestiality."

Hank lowered the stethoscope and grimaced. "All joviality aside, what do you expect me to do then?"

"Same as y'd like t' do t' y'rself."

"And if I could, do you not think I would have done it?"

"Thought it'd be easier t' do on someone else, considering the location and all. I volunteer t' be de guinea pig."

"This isn't like stitching up a cut."

"More like tweezing out a splinter, _neh_?"

"No, Remy, it's not."

"Y're smart. Y' can figure it out."

"I wouldn't even know where to start. Not yet, at least."

Remy hooked a thumb to the back of the medlab and said, "Use that MRI looking thing back there."

Hank shook his head, tempted, but weary. "I'd need more—"

"I'm more than willing t' help y' in return. Not so good with a scalpel, but I could hold up a mirror so y' could see."

"Excuse me," Hank abruptly said and moved past Remy.

"That's it? Y' just gonna drop it like that? Do y' want t' be stuck like this for the rest of y' life? And here I thought y' were one of the good guys."

"I am one of the good guys," Hank said. "Hank here."

"See, now I _know_ I need to convince y'. Y're hallucinating or something. I already know y're here."

"Remy, hush a moment," Hank said, turned away from him. "Repeat that please?"

Remy finally stopped badgering him and caught on. Hank was answering an intercom of some kind. Through it came a guttural-type accented voice, Remy guessed it belonged to the big guy whose skin transformed to gleaming metal, saying, "Ready a bed. We've got incoming."

"Oh dear," Hank said. "Is it Bobby, Jono?"

"Someone new," answered through the speaker. "How much do you know much about avian anatomy?"

"Birds?"

"No matter, Tovarisch, you will see for yourself in just a moment."

"Interesting as that sounds," Remy said, clearly opposed to an audience. "I think I'll be skedaddling."

McCoy prepped by himself. He lowered the bed Jono had used to give plenty of room to work around the bed Bobby had used, which is where he planned to put the injured… bird. Then he foraged through the drawers and cabinets for the basics he could imagine he would need. He'd wished he'd asked for an inventory and map of where everything should be. It would've moved things along much more conveniently, much more rapidly if he had.

He sighed once more. "I miss my own lab."

* * *

"Coming through," Storm hollered as she sprinted from Cerebro. 

Gambit hugged the wall at his back and enjoyed the view as she sped past. He was only distracted by it for a moment when he felt the familiar buzz, when the steel wall was no longer cold under his fingertips, but tingly. He flinched forward, throwing himself off the wall and practically into Xavier's wheeled lap.

"Easy, Remy," Xavier said in that fatherly concern of his. "Are you all right?"

"Head rush," Gambit said, drawing smoothly to a steady stand. "Sure got quite de collection of _jolie enseignants_." He winked. "Amazed the _petite hommes_ learn anything besides anatomy."

Xavier smiled congenially, yet somehow, condescendingly. "She has had her battles with 'extra credit' idioms."

"_Lagniappe_," Gambit said with a masculine chuckle as he watched her slow to a jog to meet the elevator. "Wouldn't mind some of that, m'self."

"She deserves commitment."

"_Picayune_." He translated. "Nit-picky. Why give more than I get?"

Xavier looked from the approaching group—Storm, Colossus, and Jubilee assisting Betsy and the injured Warren—to Gambit, whose attention split like pretending to serve two masters. "Why get more than you give?"

Warren's arrival to the medlab parted them, saved Xavier from hearing Gambit's masking remark, and saved Gambit from saying it.

"_Boeuf Gras."_ Didn't mean he hadn't thought it, though._ "The last feast before the fasting."_

By the time they were through the doors, Gambit had, once again, stolen away.

* * *

Gurgle. Grumble. Gurgle. Scott's stomach growled. 

Once he acknowledged that, more discomforts acquired during the course of his research and analysis of the materials Xavier had given him roared they're annoying presences. His head throbbed in equal measurement to the pangs of stiffness in his legs and aches in his neck, shoulders and back from spending so many hours hunched over the texts and the computer. He stood and stretched, arms high and back, bowing his back. He rolled his neck, shook out his arms and legs, and twisted at the waist, side to side, reaching around as far as he could. Even though the problems weren't really alleviated, he merely repeated the motions once more before settling back in his chair.

…And that's when his eyes made their own protest for rest. Attempting a compromise yet again, since duty stubbornly refused a longer break, he carefully closed his eyes, took off his protective glasses and gave himself a good two-fingered massage.

It still wasn't enough.

The aches and pangs and grumbling and gurgling and throbbing and burning continued their rampage.

Kitty, distracted by all his fidgeting, gave him the excuse, "I could really go for a chicken sandwich. Would you mind?"

He nodded gratefully at the resident computer addict and caved, for her sake. "Sure."

He left on a mission for a couple of sandwiches, a walk, and a different view.

* * *

"We will see," Essex said to Malice over the phone as he opened up the program 'Relay.' A prompt opened with a scroll bar listing several names. He scrolled down to the bottom and selected 'New.' That opened a new window with two options: "Load existing data" and "Synch, Scan, and Log." The latter he chose, and that too opened two more options. "Remote Nano" and "Local." The former was clicked that round. And finally he got to a curser prompt asking for merely two bits of information to be entered. One, Name, for which he typed 'Warren Worthington III." Two, Nano Lot I.D., for which he retrieved from an inventory checklist: KK938-DL1EG-U87M3. It was the serial number off of the tiny devices Malice applied behind Warren's ear with a tap of a finger. It hadn't melted away. It had penetrated his skin, clawed its micro mechanical way in, and attached itself to a very specific nerve that just happens not to exist in non-mutated humans. Two more keystrokes and…

* * *

"Betsy," Warren said, his voice, like his movements, tired and weary as they settled him onto the bed Hank prepared for him. "It's—" 

He winced as Jubilee bumped his left wing as she spun to help gather up the rest of the necessary bandages for Hank to use.

"Sorry," Jubilee said. She winced as well, but it was short lived. She was back on track a moment later, this time, more aware of the locale of his extra appendages.

"It's not as bad as you think," Warren continued to Betsy. "You didn't have to bring me here."

"Well, you are here now," Xavier soothed. "Might as well let us pamper you."

Hank plucked up two different gauze wraps that Jubilee had plopped on the instrument table. "Which would you prefer? Neon green or mundane white?" He gave Jubilee an admonishing, yet amused look.

"White."

"Whew!" Jubilee, in all sincerity, explained, "'Cause the neon stuff goes fast around here. All us wacky kids, you know?" She popped her gum and plopped a few multi-use metal splints onto the instrument table. She regarded his visible injuries with sparkplug aplomb. "Don't think we had enough left."

Storm busied herself readying a few syringes and lining up bottles of medicines: painkiller, antibiotics, and anti-inflammatory. Seeing the needles, surrounded by these too efficient strangers and their monstrous, calm, apparent doctor, Warren started to panic. He struggled against their ministrations.

"Hold still, please," Hank requested of him as he examined a bloody patch of feathers along the ulna and the alula on the right wing. He still had to check the worse looking mess around the phalanges on the left wing.

Sharing his panic, and concerned for it, Betsy tapped her arsenal to obtain what assurances she could. Lavender butterflies bubbled from her head, spread through the room, and flitted in circles around the strangers' heads. Jubilee was tucking some hair behind her ear when they reached her. Catching them out of her peripheral, her eyes sprang wide, alarmed and frustrated, and she backpedaled, slammed into the instrument table, and took most of it with her in a clatter to the floor.

Appearing much like a decorator crab, all sprawled on her back with limbs splayed as she was, she exclaimed, "Don't do that!" She huffed. "Jeeze! I hought I'd loosed some fireworks in here!"

Betsy didn't respond to her, but did relent with the butterflies. To Warren, she assured him, "Their intentions are good. And most of them know what they are doing."

Jubilee got the distinct impression that the last part was directed specifically to her. Dragging herself out from under the gauze and tape and swabs and such, she retorted, "You're welcome."

Hank stepped back from Warren's panicky flailing. He feared doing more harm than good if he fought him, forced him, to acquiesce. He continued pursued a different route to initiate diagnosis and treatment To Betsy, he asked, "What happened to him?"

Betsy gritted those perfectly white teeth of hers. "He ran into my car."

Hank's eyebrows flew up. "I assume it was an accident."

"It was after he crashed into a building or two. He plummeted right in front of me. I was on my way to pick him to come meet you."

"Explains the dent," Jubilee mumbled as she re-organized the materials she'd upset.

"Your snide remarks aren't helping," Betsy snapped at Jubes.

"We can't help him at all until he calms," Storm reminded Betsy.

"I'll subdue him," Xavier offered and closed his eyes in concentration.

"No!" Betsy yelled. A dozen ethereal butterflies kamikazied against Xavier's head. "I'll do it."

She moved behind Warren and elbow nudged Colossus, who had clamped Warren by the shoulders but dared no more for fear of compounding his injuries, to give her room. Then she raised her fist, spiked with an ethereal luminescent lavender psy-blade, and requested, "Forgive me."

"Don't!" Xavier warned, but it was lost in Warren's own psy-blade-plunge-thwarting scream.

* * *

"Relay Found," displayed one of Essex's monitors. "Synchronizing," it announced textually, along with a growing percentage.

* * *

Warren continued screaming. His back bowed, his limbs extended rigidly. Betsy eyed her own hand and psy-blade in horrified accusation. 

On Xavier's telepathic prompt, Colossus drew Betsy away from Warren, while Storm repeated over and over in her ear, "You didn't do it. You didn't do it. You didn't do it." Indeed she had not. The psy-blade was still locked in her pre-plunge cocked posture.

* * *

"Synchronization Complete," the program informed on the screen. Then the textual announcement of "Scanning" accompanied by another increasing percentage.

* * *

Warren's cry ceased and his body collapsed, limp, to the bed. Hank moved in. He pulled open both of Warren's eyelids individually to check his pupil dilation. He held a wrist in front of Warren's nose and mouth. He listened for Warren's heartbeat with a stethoscope. He checked Warren's pulse against the digital clock nearby. Then, he met Betsy's oh-so-worried gaze. "He is unconscious, but appears stable. If you consent, I will be happy to treat his injuries." 

Betsy nodded, jerkily, but fought off her tears of concern and relief. They were supposed to be coming here to treat her recent traumas, not Warren's. This, this, the drama teeming around her, had not been on the radar of her wallowing. It threw her into disarray. It disrupted her. It rerouted all her wallowing.

* * *

Scott swallowed the last gulp of his glass of milk and rinsed out the cup. He had to set a good example for the kids, after all. He took his time washing up the knife from the mayonnaise jar and wiping off the counter after he put away the left over chicken from the previous night's dinner, which he and the team had missed out on. He snatched a couple of sodas from the cupboard, some napkins, and the two sandwich plates. He felt much more refreshed, evident by the slight bounce to his step as he exited the kitchen.

* * *

Gambit moseyed from the corner where he had watched the others file into the Medlab. With nerves singing from witnessing the winged man's admission, he strolled past the Danger Room control room, where he was sure the grumpy badger-wolf-man would be wondering where he'd snuck off to, just before a blur of brown, white, black leather and pale creamy cheeks flew out of it. Staying clear of the booth's entrance, he pander-eyed the southern spitfire's hasty departure and let out a low whistle in appreciation. 

"Too tempting for this lowly scoundrel," he told himself.

Too tempting, indeed. He succumbed to indulging the view. He succumbed to the imaginings her horizontal inclination stirred. He indulged the sultry slow swagger it pulled from him. She compelled him like a magnet; tugged his smoldering gaze, toiled his charged libido, and then hauled his sinewy gait. Beckoned. Undulated. Uninhibited. Unadulterated. Unhinged.

It was a mistake in a long line of mistakes he would come to loathe and praise and guilt and save...or. Savor.

The hydraulic doors to the control booth opened and out stalked Logan, sniffing the air for the tobacco, bourbon, and cayenne tangs of Gambit's vitriolic scent.

Gambit knew there were no more corners to curl behind. As lackadaisical as he may have appeared, when he'd prowled he'd noted every fixture of light, every archway of door, every pane of window and mirror, and every number of steps in between. He didn't even do it on purpose, by constrict of conscious, by loose conscience. It was training ingrained, instinct adopted, like looking both ways before crossing the street. He was aware of his surroundings, especially his exits. Every good thief had to know how to get out as well as how to get in, and how to do both with the littlest detection, which was how he knew that activation of any of the hydraulic doors would give him away to the oversensitive brawler. It was, however, how he also learned the fine art of misdirection.

He pulled out two entire sealed decks of playing cards, but didn't open or charge them. His eyes steady on Logan, caught up with the new scents leading to the medlab, he measured distance and angle of two caddy-corner doors ahead of him, behind Logan, all with just his peripheral. Poised beside a third door, ready to move, ready to throw, he watched and he waited.

And then Logan did it. He stepped too close to the medlab doors. His presence set off the sensor and Gambit tapped into all that honed agility and aim to make his move. The medlab doors opened just as each pack of cards landed a step in front of two doors he'd sighted, inciting their opening before Logan's closed, while Gambit himself, slipped inside a third.

* * *

Logan surveyed the calming scene before him. Xavier was speaking softly to the clearly upset purple-black haired stranger, who was rhythmically stroking a limp wing of the other stranger. Storm and Jubilee, who also couldn't help but indulge a feel of the bristly feathers, swabbed and bandaged scratches on the bedridden man's arms and chest. Hank injected some solution into him, some mild cocktail of antibiotics and anesthetic. Only Colossus seemed out of place without a chore, so it was no surprise that he was the first to react to Logan's appearance. 

"The Cajun come by here?"

"No," Piotr said with a shake of his head. "I was looking for him earlier, but then this emergency arose."

"He was in here about twenty minutes ago," Hank said as he completed the injection. "I don't know where he went after that."

He gave a nod, half 'okay' and half 'any chops for me to bust in here?'

"On the surface, an accident of flight," Xavier said as he glanced to Logan and then onto Warren. "But there may be more to it."

"Like what?" Jubilee, always scouting for the next relief of boredom, asked.

"Something from which I plan to protect you and the other students."

Jubilee cocked her head to the side. "I'm not sure, but I think that was a burn."

"Indeed, it was," Xavier assured her. To Logan, he dismissed, "We'll inform Gambit you're looking for him if we see him."

* * *

The doors closed with nobody entering, but not before he spotted the small square object on the other side. Curious, Nightcrawler checked it out. As he picked up the deck of cards lying lonely there, Logan returned from his scout of the medlab. They exchanged opposing expressions: Logan, irritated and anxious, and Nightcrawler, titillated and mollifying. Together, they advanced to the second pack of cards across the hall and over one and through the door beyond it.

* * *

"Can I help you?" 

At the creak of the turning chair he'd frozen, mentally kicking himself for the gross error of assuming his hiding place would be uninhabited. At the airy timbre of the sprite's first word, he swung—all swank and guile—to enchant her.

"With two things," he told her with the audacity of a meek and shameful grin. "_Une_—accept my apology. Wasn't proper, how we met. Remy's _Tante Mattie_ taught him t' treat a lady better than that."

Kitty couldn't help but flush like the first rush of spring roses in Ororo's garden. "Rumor has it you were forced into it."

"_Oui, petite_," he said. "But that don't excuse it."

"True. And you did seem to enjoy it."

"Made the best of a bad situation." He took the seat beside her. Scott's chair, which was right in front of Irene's journal and all of those many opened personal files. "Pretend I was a hero, protecting a castle rather than a prison. Took a li'l thrill in the adventure of it. Ever do something like that?"

"Yeah," Kitty said. "I blame Jubilee for being a bad influence, but I get carried away on my own too."

He nodded, oh-so-reasonable understanding. "Got so caught up in the make-believe, I could've hurt you."

"Please!" Kitty said, trying to cheer him up. "Gotta be pretty sneaky to hurt someone you can't even touch."

He chuckled with her. Raised his spirits the appropriately. And, she fell deeper. She grinned like someone who enjoyed helping people, which was exactly what she was.

Encouraging him, she asked, "What was the other thing?"

He scooted closer, the opened files under his bracing hand, and said straight out, "I want to fit in."

She brightened even more. "Easy. Just got to get to know them. Take Logan for instance. He comes off all huff and puff and I'll blow your house in, but he's a big softie for the kids. Especially, for me, Rogue and Jubilee. Her, he even lets call him Wolvie."

It was the start of a beautiful friendship…

* * *

Trask had exploited Forge for as long as he could that day, and thus, reluctantly/revoltingly released him from the tasks as Sentinel mechanic to finally answer Essex's call. Forge thought it a blessing and a damning. The inhibitors regulated his access and use of his mutation, not merely suspended it. This permitted him to tap into them for the purpose of working for them. Doing so sickened him. It not only betrayed his own kind, but also, his sensibilities and logics. On top of that, it twisted his gut like revolving hot pokers. An accessory of his mutation innately included the visceral connection to the purpose of all mechanical devices. 

The Sentinels were built for a horrific function. They were designed to identify and obliterate each and every mutant they encountered.

The inhibitors did little to ease those physical, emotional, and psychological bonds between he and that which he applied his evolved skills.

The pain dulled to pin pricks the further away from the Sentinel pit he got. Overlapping that pain came the blazing queasiness of Essex's labs.

Essex greeted Forge's arrival with an uplifted hand that bid for silence. While waiting, in an attempt to quell the bile-raising equipment and programs engulfing him, he read the monitors over Essex's head.

Most were much of the same, but one in particular tugged at that mutation accessory of his, begged his hand to end it, to prevent the trapping of another mutant. The screen displayed the proud statement, "Scan Complete." It also listed the results of that scan.

Motor skills control: 43 percent compatibility, 2 percent success.  
Sensory control: 98 percent compatibility, 96 percent success.  
Endocrine control: 31 percent compatibility, 17 percent success.  
Mutation control: 25 percent compatibility, 3 percent success.

Forge saw the glower of dissatisfaction in Essex's pale reflection upon the monitors.

"I followed your directions precisely," came Malice's tinny defense over Essex's phone. His lack of immediate reply had been her only provocation.

Essex targeted Forge via his reflection, but said to Malice, "It will have to do."

Forge's thoughts mimicked Essex's own. But, with a twist. The nano hadn't worked perfectly, but it could've been worse.

* * *

The war room, as the nosy Jubilee had dubbed it, was pristine. It was also empty. This fact irritated the Wolverine to his limits. It incited the growl of his inquiry to the returning Scott. 

"Where's that damn snake?"

Scott had no idea what Logan was talking about.

"Gambit," Kurt supplied for clarification.

"He's skulking somewhere around here," Logan added.

"Haven't seen him," Scott said with a mild shrug and continued on his way.

"Prick," Logan mumbled before heading towards the other end of the underground hall. He didn't get ten steps.

* * *

"With Storm, honesty, integrity, and loyalty is what matters most," Kitty explained. "She's not the most lenient or forgiving, but she isn't the strictest either." 

"She got any hobbies?"

"Oh, yeah," Kitty chatted on. "Her garden. It's like meditation for her or something, like her religion, practically. She spends hours out there."

"What's her favorite flower?"

Kitty scrunched her face in thought. Remy thought it was cute. Too cute. Kid sister cute. It kinda thwarted his hormones. He'd have to work harder to muster up the soft flirt.

"Ummm," Kitty said. "Lilac, I think. But, don't quote me on that."

The door opened and in walked Scott balancing two plates and two sodas and napkins somewhere mixed in. He took one look at Gambit, the gossiping Kitty, the opened personal files, and the computer monitors unabashedly displaying sensitive information and his eyes pinched lethally into a vicious glower. He tilted his head back out the doorway and hollered to Logan, "He's in here." To Kitty, he said, "You're on suspension."

"What?" Kitty barked in shock. "Why? I didn't do anything."

"Dereliction of duty," Scott replied evenly. He thrust the hand holding the sodas in an all-encompassing sweep of the work areas. "For leaking private information and endangering the team and the students."

"We were just talking," Kitty defended.

"Don't bother," Gambit said and his eyes flared at Scott. "It's just like I thought. Y' go and bend over backwards for Essex's primary financier, but Gambit's nothing but prison-bait gutter trash. He ain't never gonna be welcome."

* * *

"Now that you've got it, what are you going to do with it?" 

"In time, win." Magneto's answer went to Cortez but the greedy look went to Mystique. "But, for now…"

He parted the steel wall of his office. He rose on a magnetic field and floated backwards through the opening until he was above the tail end of the unlikely surprise Wanda had docked in the base.

"…I'll dispose of this derelict ship."

A few gestures of those hands that dripped with all that erupting power and the ship shredded apart. Pieces flew here and there, all under his control, as he reshuffled them, reshaped them, and molded them into a new wing of the base before their very eyes. And, so many eyes there were. The damp courtyard below was filled with dozens of gasping and cowering mutants as they watched in awe and fury the impressive impromptu remodeling.

"My fellow mutants," Magneto boomed to his recruits. "My brothers in arms!" He regaled in that awful roiling energy that lapped at his body as his audience lapped up his words. "My Acolytes! I have promised you a home, and so I provide this."

Several more chunks of the ship slapped and then melded together.

"But this is _nothing_ compared to what we will gain from our victory over those who pledge to decimate us," he continued in his speech. "Those _inferior_ humans tremble with the nightmares derived of the mere _idea_ of what our superiority will do to them."

Their cowering lessened. They stood straighter, more secure, more confident and gathered closer, unified.

"For we _are_ superior. We are Gods among insects. If they nip at our heels we will crush them. If they pursue this war, they will die. And then, _then_, we will finally have a permanent home. It will _all_ be ours."

Their cheers pierced straight to the heavens. Their applause shook their very foundations.

And through it all, Destiny sat idly in her quarters, sipping her tea, trying not to roll her eyes at the inane, belligerent, egotistical, overestimating deluge that bellowed into her peace and quiet solitude.

* * *

"Escort him to his room," Scott ordered Logan. "Watch him." 

"Do ya one better," Logan said as he pulled out a set of the adamantium cuffs they brought back from the Diamond Research Facility. "You're not slipping out of these this time." The locking mechanisms were visibly mangled. Logan had done it with his own claws.

"You're making a mistake," Kitty told them. She latched onto Gambit's arm and phased him, made it impossible for Logan to apply the cuffs. "I won't let you do it."

"Two weeks suspension," Scott threatened.

She held her ground.

"Three weeks."

Kitty went ghostly herself as well. Their shoes disappeared into the floor.

"You're being ridiculous," Logan said. He was losing what little remained of his temper. "Turn him over, half-pint."

"Maybe we should hear her out," Kurt suggested.

Scott ignored him. "A month."

"He isn't our enemy," she said. They sank to their knees.

Not liking where this was going so quickly, Kurt teleported to the Professor.

"Sink any lower and you'll have your diploma before you're on another mission," Scott said with finality.

"Do what he says, _petite_."

Kitty stared at Remy aghast.

"Remy ain't worth it," he reasoned to her and she dejectedly raised them above the floor.

"First thing you've said that I believe," Logan said.

"_Vache_!" Gambit cursed. "I haven't spoken one lie t' y' yet."

"You haven't been very truthful either," Scott said. "In fact, you haven't said much of anything." He watched as Kitty and Gambit solidified, then ordered, "Kitty, step away from him."

"You know what, Scott? Leading the team doesn't make you dictator," Kitty said. "You're not even as good at it as you like to think. If you were, you'd have paid closer attention." She snatched up the files she was helping him research and flung them at him. "Finish it yourself." Then she air-walked up through the ceiling.

Gambit put out his wrists in melodramatic surrender. "If she can't earn y'r trust and respect, ain't no way I ever had a chance."

"She'll get over it," Logan said. He slapped on the cuffs. "We'll get over you."

As Logan made sure the cuffs were tight, Gambit leaned in and spitefully whispered, "I've seen Stryker's files, _couchon_."

Logan shoved him out the door like shoving the need to know deep inside his own gut.

Gambit stumbled ahead but spat back, "Y' _volunteered_ t' be his prize pet."

Logan yanked him by his collar. "Keep it up and you'll be volunteering a claw in your back."

"Roughin' up prisoners be just y'r _forte_, don't it?"

"Logan, release him." It was Xavier. Kurt, Jubilee, and Colossus were right behind him. "What is going on out here?"

"I caught him in the records room," Scott told the Professor. "He was manipulating Kitty so he could spy on us."

"Is this true, Remy?"

"Just being my usual charming self."

"He had his hands on the _personal_ files," Scott said.

"That what that mess on the desk be? If they so important y' probably shouldn't have left the kid with them unsupervised."

Xavier forwarded the question to Scott with an inquisitively raised eyebrow.

Scott held his head high. "Kitty offered to help with some of the research."

Xavier measured them all with a heavy gaze before deciding. "Let him go."

Logan grumbled, but obeyed it with a close slice of his claws, which Xavier also watched profoundly.

"Piotr, take Remy to his room," Xavier continued. "Don't let anyone disturb him. That means you, Logan."

Logan grunted his assent.

"Now, if you all can behave yourselves for a while, I would like to attend to our traumatized guests."

"Professor—"

"I won't discuss it. I extended him the invitation and it will remain until I say so."

"He claimed we were harboring Essex's investor."

"I don't know much about them yet, but Moira sent then. I'll find out what I can now, but more than likely it will wait until tomorrow, so expect a meeting over breakfast. Whatever this all turns out to be about, I don't want any of you to give them a hard time. Remy included. This institute is a safe haven for mutants, regardless of their pasts, present, or future. We will welcome them all equally."

Scott nodded wearily, but grudgingly accepted it for now. It was almost as if he were humbled.

* * *

Essex set Warren's remote nano program to record and to download to the log three times a day. Then, he stood to tower over Forge. 

"You assured me they would work," Essex sneered. "Are you trying to sabotage my work?"

"I told you there would be greater limitations with greater distance. I also told you that there could be glitches if there weren't at least three nanos used in tandem. And, I warned you of the potential difficulties due to unpredictable variables were it applied by someone unfamiliar with it, especially when not done under controllable conditions. If that does not fit in with your agenda, it's not my responsibility. Even the things _I_ build have their restrictions."

"Oh, I can and will hold you responsible for whatever it is I choose."

"Yeah, I know. Because logic and morality are irrelevant to you."

Smack! Forge tasted blood. The force of the blow had split his lip.

"You will fix this problem. You will do it from the confines of the lab. You will not return to Trask's petty chores until it is done."

Forge wiped the blood from his lip. "Is that all?"

"No," Essex said and returned to his seat. "Creed is having obedience difficulty with Caliban. It appears his mutation interferes with his chip. I ran a diagnostic and I believe the error can be fixed without further surgery. Use Cypher if you need to. Fresh cold water works best. Rectify that first."

"Match found," the computer relayed.

That announcement paused Essex for a moment before he completed his orders to Forge. "But, before you address the nano issues, you will finish preparing and then verify the stability of Malice's new host. It is imperative that everything goes smoothly with her."

He turned back to his monitors as though he'd been alone all along.

MATCH FOUND. It was the comparison program. MUNROE, ORORO aka STORM.

Forge was struck with a pang of pity for the pretty woman who was now ensnared in Essex's crosshairs. A face to a name was only one step away from Essex's tender care.

"Oh, and Forge," Essex threw over his shoulder. "I advise you not to permit another failure to come to pass. You will not outlive your usefulness."

Indeed, Forge did not bode she would enjoy even Essex's most gracious attentions.

* * *

The students of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters dined upon Xavier's gracious and plentiful dinner in their typical rambunctious fashion. However, since only Kurt and Colossus chaperoned them, it was a little out of hand. The other X-Men had kept their distance. Some had been tied up with pressing priorities. Xavier and Hank attended to Betsy and Warren. And before they called it a night, they had agreed upon a suitable, relatively simple procedure for the repetitive use of the adamantium tipped syringes. Scott, alone in his recovery, continued his research into Irene's journal, the possible source of the mutant power surges/advancements, and any connection the two may have shared. His pursuit continued beyond the witching hour and well into his dreams themselves. The remaining X-Men all passed the evening in similar, though individual ways. They lied in their beds. They fidgeted. They watched the clouds disguise and then unveil the constellations. Most of all, they brooded. It was what Gambit had done as well. The only adult in the mansion to have received a restful, unbroken sleep was Major Carol Danvers. She had slept like the dead.

* * *

Musty. Stale. Dusty. Pale. Dank. Fetid. Rank. Indebted. 

"Cypher."

Musty. Stale. Dusty. Pale. Dank. Fetid. Rank. Indebted.

"Hey, you awake?"

Musty. Stale. Dusty. Pale. Dank. Fetid. Rank. Indebted.

"Of course you're awake. You don't sleep. You just go into standby."

Musty. Stale. Dusty. Pale. Dank. Fetid. Rank. Indebted.

"Hey!" He clapped his hands. The air stirred. Or had he breathed… "Don't make me turn on the light."

Musty. Stale. Dusty. Pale. Dank. Fetid. Rank. Indebted.

"Cypher?" He felt cold. Chilled up his whole spine. He felt alone. Empty as a corpse.

Musty. Stale. Dusty. Pale. Dank. Fetid. Rank. Indebted.

"Ramsey, man..." Nobody had been in there in quite a while. It disturbed even Creed.

Musty. Stale. Dusty. Pale. Dank. Fetid. Rank. Indebted.

He waved a quavering hand in front of where he suspected the eyes to be. "Doug?"

"I do sleep." Metallic.

"Holy!" Kerplunk! He fell right on his hind side. He had tripped over one of the many, many, many bundles of cables fanned across the floor.

"It's exercise that I don't get much of." Electronic.

All the bundles of cables plugged into the central processing unit in the middle of the floor.

"Company, either." Cypher.

The voice came from the center of the room.

"Or fresh water. I am rather thirsty." Ramsey.

Forge popped up the sip-top of the sports bottle. He reached carefully between the densely woven myriad wires and brought purified liquid sustenance to the boy's lips.

"Thank you." He sipped. "For the water." He swallowed. "And for leaving…" He gulped. "…Off the lights." Doug.

Forge shamefully shared the kid's gratitude. One was sensitive to the light, the other, to the sight.

Musty. Stale. Dusty. Pale. Dank. Fetid. Rank. Indebted.

* * *

**End Chapter 04 of 05.**

(I can't guarantee the final chapter will be up within 24 hours, but I will try.)

**Next Chapter: **"Well, the solution to that is easy, Sugah," Rogue said with a flip of her hair. "We make the highest bid."

* * *

_Edited/rewritten May 24, 2006  
Posted May 30, 2006

* * *

_

_Thank you for indulging._


	5. Chapter 5 of 5 Highest Bid

**Review responses:**

**Ishandahalf: **I am sooo with you regarding Beast spouting his oh so lovable and iconographical "Oh my stars and garters!" :squeals:D The same can be said of Juggernaut's "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!" which was a reference to the fanvideo that's been making it's humorous rounds of the internet. There was TONS of fanservice in X3. :D Yeah, Essex has Gambit pretty desperate doesn't he? He gives me the creeps. Probably why I love him as an X-Villain so much. :D If you like the length of chapter four… you'll like this one better. I was tempted to chop it into two chapters because I had been aiming as a relative consistency between all the chapter lengths. However, I must've jinxed myself (like you did with chapter four's update time, hehe) because I had kept putting "chapter of 5" on all the chapter titles and such. :shakes head: That was silly of me. But, then again, if not for that, I would've gone and made it six chapters, and then, this post wouldn't be quite as long as it is, now would it? I'm having tons of fun with the segues between chapters, with connecting the different themes and dialogues and imageries… challenging, and fun. :D Honestly, I'm just having so much fun with all the aspects of this. And I'm so glad to see you and other readers enjoying as well. Those lines you mentioned seem to be common faves of readers… they were among my faves of that chapter as well. I wonder if we'll match up like that again this chapter, cause there sure are some douzies close to my heart in this one. :D

**Jason: **Haha. I love your reviews. So short, yet they say so much. :D There's more Betsy in this one for ya, though, probably not enough to sate you. As if you could be sated. :winks:ruffles your hair: Oh yeah... and you and alchy will recognize, likely, a couple little bits in this that I had pasted to you in IM a while back. But, they are minuscule compared to the rest of this chappy.

**Ludi: ** :glomps: hehe. I have no problem whatsoever with you reviewing here and neglecting the email. Especially, when I'm pretty sure I forgot to send that chapter to you in email. oo Naughty me. And you are so right about those lines. You were very much on my mind when I wrote them. :D Oh mah goodness was this a long review… :melts with pride: hehe. I hold all of your comments close to my heart and my thoughts. You give such impeccable feedback. It's what every writer hopes for, I'm sure. :eats it up: As for the research… the internet is a mighty fine thing for such small things as the names of anatomy and such. Got more of that this chapter. Hehe. Oh, and I finally got some sleep… which is why this chappy here didn't get up yesterday. Of course, I still have to finish the fic you sent me, and I've gotta find a way to convince you to post it for everyone else to read. Tis fabulous. I'm so addicted. I'm not even to the end and already I'm wanting you to do a sequel. Hehe. :D

**Alchy: **You sweet, sweet kittie you. I can't thank you enough for reading and for reviewing. It means so very much to me. I'm sorry that chapter four wouldn't load for you. Here's hoping both four and five will work better now, and perhaps even to your benefit. They flow together almost as if they could've been one ginormous chapter. Well, at least I think they do. I am very eager to hear your thoughts on them once you get to read them. :Pets the kitty under his chin: hehe. And as I told Jason above, though you might recognize a couple parts in this chapter from stuff I shared in IM a while back, those bits are itty bitty compared to the rest of this chapter:D

**Anamarie Chambers: ** I love your eye! I'm so giddy that you picked up on those extra-rich lines as well. I thrilled in writing them and I thrill it more when readers appreciate them. Thank you so much for that. :D As for saving everyone… well… there's a long road ahead, but some things, at any rate, get their just due in this chapter… sort of… hehehehe.

**Angw:** Thank you so much for the praise. I am so glad you're reading and I am honored that it pleases you. I hope you stay for the long haul (there are 5 parts to X-Men Rising and this is only Part Two). :D

And of course, thank you to everyone who has read even if you haven't let me know with your comments. :D

**Now…**  
Hold on to your britches, ya'll… this be a long and winding one.  
But, of course, not everything is exactly what it seems.  
:winks:  
_Or is it?_  
Hee hee hee.

And one more thing…. Um… pardon my _French_.

* * *

**Chapter Five**

Musty. Stale. Dusty. Pale. Dank. Fetid. Rank. Indebted.

"Is there anything else?" Metallic. Doug.

Forge almost said no, but he was loathe to leave the child, for that was all he really was, a child, alone and thirsty. "Can you access the Regeneration pods?"

"Yes." Electronic. Ramsey.

Forge shifted. His mechanical leg pinched from the long awkward sit amidst the cables. "Can you assess one of their…" He fumbled for the word. He would not use Essex's term. "…inhabitants?"

"Yes." Cypher. "Which one?"

He realized… "I don't know her name. She's the third on the right."

"Unhelpful. Physical order is not computed and there are three females." A series of whirs and clicks, too similar to an old modem, though more advanced, and then, "What is her purpose?"

"Malice's host."

"Located." Metallic. Electronic. "Regeneration complete. Redundant diagnostic will take four hours, thirty-two minutes and nine seconds to complete."

Musty. Stale. Dusty. Pale. Dank. Fetid. Rank. Indebted.

Forge was conflicted. He could use some sleep. He could use some food. He could be nice and bring the boy more icy cold water. And yet, he found it near impossible to leave.

Permitting, not dismissing. "You can go." When Forge did not move or speak, he added, "I would like a bit of candy or cake. Any sweet you could find." Metallic. "It has been…" Electronic. "…time."

"I can do that." And still, it took more effort to drag himself from Doug's presence than it did to force himself to work on the Sentinels.

Musty. Stale. Dusty. Pale. Dank. Fetid. Rank. Indebted.

* * *

"Remy's accurate," Warren said. He shrugged, and winced for it. 

The confines of Xavier's office, close quarters with eleven people in it, did little for the comfort of Warren's injuries. However, it was better than eating breakfast in the medlab.

Continuing, Warren confirmed, "Worthington Industries is one of the Diamond Research Center's biggest contributors. I personally consigned the funding that went to their mutant rehabilitation facility."

Kitty bit back the sarcastic remark regarding Remy's presupposed indictment bidden on her lips. She was in the big leagues now, after all. Maturity was expected of her. Of course, that didn't stop the petulant 'I told you so' scrunching of her face. It was only one motion shy of sticking her tongue out at Scott.

"And just how would Remy know that?" Logan asked, taking the punch out of Kitty's indignation.

Warren didn't even blink. Nor, did he acknowledge the slander to it. "He works for Dr. Essex." It was a fact, plain and simple, benign and lackluster.

"Work_ed_," Gambit chirped from under those cinnamon and marmalade bangs of his. "Unemployed at the moment."

"Top dollar, too," Warren said. "According to last quarter's reports."

"So you're a mercenary," Scott stated more than asked Gambit.

"I'm a independent contractor," Gambit said. He smirked. "Freelance. Security ain't usually my style, though." He shrugged, non-committal. "Work's work."

"Pardon the tangent," Hank said. "But, it just occurred to me. You're the third, I take it?" Most of the team didn't understand the question.

Warren had. He nodded.

A welcoming grin split his beastly features. "Good to meet you, Warren Worthington the third." Now, they all understood. "I'm Dr. Henry McCoy." He offered his furry hand. "My apologies for missing our appointment two months ago." He swept a hand to indicate his body, his appearance, namely the blue fur and skin. "I was rather indisposed."

Warren eyed him with slight misgiving, but shook his hand nonetheless. "You didn't happen to have a run in with a mutant named Roulette, did you?"

"No," Hank said and adjusted his glasses in query. "Mine was with Essex."

Warren contained his distress, but not his concern nor the dawning confirmation of suspicion. He and Betsy shared this look. Between them, it was tender, caring, loving. A trauma shared. Closure, of a sort, communed. They squeezed each other's hands.

"In fact," Hank continued, "Until these fine people rescued me last night, I was a specimen of the less-than-public corner of Essex's rehabilitation program."

"When you say rescue?" Betsy.

"We broke him out," Rogue said, brusque and brash as a train chug, chug, chugging atop an anorexic, emaciated bridge over the Mississippi.

"That explains the half-dead soldier down there." Betsy was even blunter, and bolder. "Covering your tracks, were you?"

Rogue half choked on her coffee. Bobby, hand returned to normal, patted her back. Storm patted her hand. Neither comforted her, touched her where she needed it. She set her coffee cup in its saucer on the dark mahogany—the color of rescue—end table. It effectively pulled her from their claustrophobic reach.

"It was an accident, I assure you," Xavier said.

Scott briefly explained what had happened.

"We didn't have much time to decide." Nightcrawler. "The soldiers, they were coming. Fast, and in great number."

"She's sure as hell better here than there," Logan added. He chewed his unlit cigar, apparently the breakfast of wolverines. "Just look at Beast and the Cajun there."

Gambit paused in his chewing of his croissant. He cocked his head and peaked out those flippant bangs of his. Part disbelief. Part scrutiny.

"We have another friend in his custody," Storm said, laden with the plea.

"Y'r breaking in again?" Gambit asked. Part disbelief. Part eagerness.

"You volunteering?" Logan. It earned him a glare from Gambit.

"If I never see that place again, it'd be as good as heaven." It slipped out so swiftly he looked up as if to see who had said it.

"It'd be suicide," Warren said, shaking his head. "They'd be expecting it. Especially if they know to use your friend as bait."

"We don't think he knows," Storm said.

"It's our only anticipated advantage, actually," Scott said.

"A slim one, at best." Nightcrawler.

"We don't know what he knows." Xavier. "Even with Cerebro boosting my power, I've not been able to get any kind of a lock on him."

"Yeah," Betsy confirmed. "Telepathy doesn't work on him. Bloody hell of a backlash."

"So, he's a mutant too," Logan exposed, grousing.

"Or the devil himself," Gambit cuckooed. Quieter, not expecting anyone to pay attention to him, he supplemented, "Frankenstein, at the very least."

"I could get you in," Warren chirped in contribution. "Straight and narrow. Right in the front. Legit."

Scott harped on that. "I don't—"

Xavier stalled him with a raised hand. "Scott, let him speak."

"I declined a third-party request for more funding," Warren informed them. "I can use that to set up a meeting with him directly."

Betsy squeezed his hand, for which he winced, and she squeezed harder. "You aren't going."

"I wouldn't have to," he said and she eased off. "I'd tell him to meet with you regarding your friend."

"Caliban," Storm supplied.

"Caliban," Warren acknowledged. "I don't have proof, but I'm sure that my _accident_ is connected. Essex may have even ordered it."

"How would that help us any?" Logan. "Seems like it'd just double the trouble."

"It does," Warren said. "And that's why it works. He knows that you know that he knows that you know..." He motioned '_on and on_' with his hand. "But the media doesn't know that the missing Doctor McCoy here isn't missing anymore."

"Senator Kelly's Mutant Good Will Research Committee," Xavier said. It lingered. It sparked.

"It could use some good press," Scott said. "The media has been laying into it even more since your disappearance."

"Do you think—" _she_ "—he'd do it?" Storm questioned both Xavier and Hank.

"I could call him," Hank suggested.

"How do we know you're not setting us up," Bobby asked. Most of them had thought it. Scott had been cut off from voicing it. Bobby only got it out because nobody had expected it from him.

"You don't," Warren said evenly.

"In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain," Hank quoted, and then credited, "Pliny the elder."

Betsy then filled in, "But it makes us equal in risks."

"Be wary of the man who urges an action in which he himself incurs no risk," Hank quoted again. "Joaquin Setanti."

Scott didn't see the connection. "Us?" Couldn't fathom it. "We're the good guys." Myopic.

"We only have your word on that," Betsy said. "And Moira's, too, of course."

"Who couldn't help us," Warren reminded them, "And who is an ocean away."

"It's our home, our turf," Rogue puzzled out for herself. "You're vulnerable here."

"I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists," Hank quoted a third time. "Robert Browning."

"What do you think, Professor?" asked Storm.

Obviously conflicted, he pondered it a moment.

Hank urged with one final quote. "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. Voltaire."

"Make it so," Xavier said decisively. "Warren, Henry, call your contacts. Storm, Scott, Logan and Piotr, ready the jet. You'll be accompanying Hank and me."

"Professor," Storm said, "Only Kurt to supervise the kids?"

Right on top of her, Logan blurted, "What about the Cajun?"

At the tail of them, came Scott. "No offense to you two," meaning Betsy and Warren, "I get that staying here exposes you, but too little defense here will leave us wide open at both ends."

"Ororo needs to come because of Caliban," Xavier reasoned. "Piotr isn't experienced enough to make much more of a difference here than I would." He tapped his chair in obvious explanation. "So, it'll have to be either Scott or Logan. Decide between yourselves. I want to leave here within an hour."

They dispersed, water in oil, slow and oozing. Only Kitty leapt up like grease splatter-popping in a hot pan.

* * *

Forge had the strangest urge to bring Doug griddle pancakes slopped in rich real butter, smothered in thick and dark maple syrup, and dotted with a few fresh strawberries. Of course, he had no access to those. He did, however, have some glucose tablets in lab two. Well, he didn't have them, but he acquired them from Essex's supplies easily enough. They were used for stabilizing blood sugar levels. It wasn't much, but he made a sweet-drink out of them by crushing them up and mixing them with another bottle of water. He was about to make due with that when he remembered the single pristine orange in his barracks—_prison_—locker. It had been a reward for the completion of the first working nano, currently possessing Sabretooth at that very moment. Reward it may have been, but there was no ceremony to its presentation. In fact, there had been no presentation or even any acknowledgment that that was what that Orange was. It had merely been resting in a bowl on the mess-hall-platter beside the protein patty and vitamin fortified carbohydrate mush. Forge hadn't much liked oranges, but he couldn't bring himself to discard the fruit either. It reminded him of the open air, the sting of salt, and the sun. 

The sun.

"It has been…" Doug had said. Metallic. Electronic. Sunny. "..a long time."

It sure had.

When Forge fed a lump of that sticky, dripping, pulpy flesh to Doug he fought down remembrance of the other reason he hadn't simply eaten the fruit himself out of pure and simple principal of deserving. Would be a fine spoiler of a time to find that suspicion confirmed when he was trying to spoil the boy.

* * *

"Kitty," Scott called. He had meant to address the roster issue with Logan first, but didn't want to let Kitty slip away. "I'm revoking your suspension," he told her. "I over reacted." 

Kitty stopped and regarded him with teenage suspicion. "Is this a trick?"

"However…"

Kitty sighed with a roll of her eyes. "It's a trick."

"However," Scott reiterated more strongly, "I would like you to stick close to home tonight. No trips to the mall or the movies."

"You're grounding me? Some apology."

"I admit I didn't listen to you as well as I should have," Scott continued. "That doesn't change that it's also important that you understand why I did. You can't be negligent with our privacy. It can cost us more than our personal secrets. I can cost us the lives of our—" His throat closed up, refused to finish it. Still, he tried again. "Cost us our—"

"I get it," Kitty told him. "I do." Pity etched her voice as it did her expression. "I promise to be more careful from now on." Grudges, for her, were like her mutation: wispy, flimsy, and disappearing.

* * *

As though nonchalance made him invisible, Gambit watched and listened.

* * *

"I have some research to finish," Scott began the roster debate with Logan. 

Logan, however, wasn't much listening. Unfortunately, he didn't like what he _was_ hearing in its place.

* * *

Rogue was hesitant, somehow embarrassed, as she asked Bobby about his hand, "So, what's the verdict?" 

Perhaps her self-consciousness was infectious. Perhaps all of her was infectious. Perhaps he misinterpreted her doubts. Perhaps he masked his own. Perhaps he didn't see the benefits of having ice instead of skin. Perhaps he didn't want to find out if it would make him untouchable and thus, didn't want the chance to find out if two untouchables could touch each other. Perhaps he was just confused. Whatever it was, not meeting her gaze erected a wall, barred the way.

Gambit eased into that tiny space like slipping free of his cuffs. His gaze slid over her, sauced pralines over her ice cream skin, and past, to Bobby. He jabbed a finger at Bobby's unfrozen hand and asked him, "De Bête cure y'r meatsicle?"

Rogue scoffed. "C'mon, Bobby. Let's talk about this somewhere else."

"Why, Rogue?" He widened the gap. "I can't keep it secret. And covering it up won't stop it." Added more bars.

"I wasn't suggesting that," Rogue defended. She had no idea how it had soured so rapidly.

To Gambit, Bobby answered, "There is no cure for mutation." He stabbed a look at Rogue that made her all too aware of her long sleeves, her long hair, and her long gloves. "There isn't even a reprieve."

Gambit didn't get his chance to agree. Bobby fled.

* * *

"I'll stay." Logan interrupted Scott's plethora of reasons to remain. "Won't be much use for protection if you've got your _eye_ glued to a computer the whole time." Logan had paid closer attention than he thought. "Besides," Logan added as he headed off after his quarry, "Cajun's still got a date with the Danger Room."

* * *

"Bobby!" Rogue chased her voice that chased after him. She didn't get far, though. Gambit grabbed her sleeve. 

"Let him go, chére," Gambit said. It was mild, and without flirtation or innuendo. But then that, in and of itself, was a sort of charm all on its own.

Rogue spun back. She eyed his hand on her as if it were a viper's bite. Her voice shot low and venomous to match it. "You're a real slow learner, ain't ya, Gumbo." Acid-eaten. Gravelly. "Don't mind teachin' ya another lesson." She twisted her wrist, got the upper hand. Dug her fingers into his forearm muscles, like claws like teeth and tongue chewing and dipping for the Anconeus, the Extensor carpi radialis longus, ulnaris, minimi, and of course that ever tasty digitorum muscle. "Hope it's just as spicey."

"Marie." Only Logan knew how to really get to her.

She blinked, doe in the headlights, and released Gambit like he'd been a downed power line. He stumbled right into Logan's grasp.

"Move it along," Logan told Remy. Around him, Logan whistled and called, "Kurt!" When Kurt glanced over he pointed at Remy and then gave Remy a nudge in Kurt's direction. "Go with the Elf."

"So much for not being hounded," Gambit griped, but walked on over to Nightcrawler just the same.

Rogue could guess what was coming. "Oh, Lordy, Logan, I don't need a lecture telling me to steer clear of the sleazy swamp rat."

"You heard what happened with Kitty?"

"Does it count as eavesdropping when they talk that loud and they know they're only three feet from ya?"

"Gambit's been playing her," Logan said, bypassing her small talk. "Pumping her for information."

"Yeah," Rogue scoffed, "Because the dorm room gossip around here is such a hot commodity. What is he going to learn from her? The Professor's favorite color? Boom-Boom's latest prank victim?" Rogue mused then for a moment. "Actually, there might be something to that. They do both have that tossing-exploding-objects thing going on. They've got about the same mentality too. 'Course she is only thirteen. Or is she twelve. Or was it fourteen."

He swatted at her and growled the warning, "Rogue." Did his hand just pass through her wrist or had he merely missed her?

She blinked brown eyes at him. Caustic. "What?" Nonplussed.

Had to have just missed her. "Listen up, kid," he said, returning to the topic. "Anyway I slice it, Gambit's got no loyalty."

"'Cause you're the poster child for meaningful, selfless prioritizing. Abandoning us ta chase your tail… Like white on rice."

Green eyes. Rogue blinked. Hazel. Blink. Brown.

Logan narrowed his eyes on her, but continued, "I know his type. Saw his kind around the cage fight scene all the time. He's into dirty money. And, he'll turn over quick for a higher bid."

"Well, the solution to that is easy, Sugah," Rogue said with a flip of her hair. "We make the highest bid."

"I can't talk to you when you're like this," Logan said and shook his head at her. "Go after your boyfriend. Keep away from the Cajun. When Chuck and the Doc are back," he poked her shoulder, "Get yourself checked out."

* * *

"I can correct the error," Doug Ramsey, aka Cypher said in that metal on metal electronic voice of his. 

"Just like that?" Forge asked.

Musty. Stale. Dusty. Pale. Dank. Fetid. Rank. Indebted.

"It is a relatively simple procedure. It will take me an estimated forty-nine minutes and thirty-four seconds to complete," Cypher clarified. "Is that acceptable?"

"Yeah," Forge said. "Can I do anything to help?"

"More water would be appreciated. But, otherwise I require no assistance."

"Sure," Forge said as he stood to retrieve another few bottles of water. So far, there had been no signs that the orange had been poisoned. It set his mind to wandering over that… and other things.

Musty. Stale. Dusty. Pale. Dank. Fetid. Rank. Indebted.

* * *

Erik woke at the speed of social change. His head pounded out a protest march. His limbs unfurled with the flexibility of bigotry. 

Mystique stood over him with a glass of water and two aspirin in hand. He waved them off.

"Dr. Henry McCoy is no longer missing."

He took the water.

"He's requested a press conference with Senator Kelly."

He took one of the aspirin.

"Xavier will be with him."

He took the other one.

"Locate Cortez before you go," Erik told her. Stiff-armed as the law, he handed her the now empty glass. "Send him to my chambers."

* * *

Logan tracked down Kurt in the recreation room. He was crouched over a small pale haired child, ten years old, wailing at the top of her lungs. The child was on her hands and knees, which seemed to be adhered to the floor. Gambit was nowhere to be seen. 

"Litarra, _liebling_, you have to relax like the Professor taught you," Kurt was saying to the panicking girl and he tugged on her. "When you calm, the secretion will soften. Then you can reabsorb it and come loose."

"Where's Gambit?" Logan was about over asking that question.

"I told him to meet us at the Danger Room later," Kurt said. He tugged at the crying girl again, to no avail. "I think I'm going to be a while."

"Why don't you have Kitty phase her free?"

Kurt immediately brightened. "Good idea." He gave Litarra a pat on the head and told her, "I will bring _katzen_. She will solve this." A snap to Logan preceded, "Logan will stay with you."

"Kurt, wait."

BAMF! Too late.

Litarra took one look at Logan and sniffled. Logan sighed. He had fallen right into that one.

* * *

"Hmm," Forge mused as he returned with another bottle of water. "I wonder why Essex involved me in this at all." 

"Because I have bypassed every summoning program and device he has ever applied on me." Cypher.

"Really?"

"Yes. There is no language I cannot translate. All of Essex's devices require programs to direct them. All programs are composed of computer languages. It is merely a matter of learning the language it uses and then rewriting it. He may bind me to this room, to these cables, but I will not work for him."

"If you can refuse his bidding, why do you do this deed now?"

"Because we are the same. Contained, misused, and lonely." Metallic. Electronic. "Twenty-seven minutes and thirty-one seconds remaining."

Forge situated the bottle carefully between the wires and brought it to Cypher's mouth. He let the boy have his fill. Doug swallowed the water and sighed contentedly.

"There is something else you can do for me," Doug said.

"What?"

"Stay until I am done."

Musty. Stale. Dusty. Pale. Dank. Fetid. Rank. Indebted.

* * *

BAMF! 

"What?" Jubilee wasn't so jubilant first thing in the morning. "Well?"

"I am looking for Kitty."

Jubilee flung open the door, apparently indicating he come on in and look for her, then, with a vague gesture to the beds further over crawled back into her own.

Kitty's bed was made. He identified it by the homemade stuffed toy replica of Nightcrawler, himself, that sat sprightly on her pillow. Kitty herself, however, was not in the room.

BAMF!

* * *

BAMF! 

There was no sight of her in the library either.

BAMF!

* * *

Gambit explored the grounds. Being inside the mansion had begun to feel like a prison. Granted, it _was_ better than being at Essex's beck and call. For all his misgivings regarding this lily place he'd been brought to, at least it was out of Essex's range. 

Having begun his wanderings as a sneaky escape, he had gotten as far as the paved trial that wove around a clump of trees that hugged a lake when his fingertips began to itch. By the time the lake was in sight, his fingers prickled as if with heat. Seeing the two mutants at the dock behaving so mundanely—the girl swung her feet off its edge, kicking the water, and the boy skipped rocks with practiced ease—knotted his gut and clenched his now stinging hands into fists. He wasn't sure if the glow of his fingerless gloves was for the picture perfect scene before him or the hard to bury tingling need to belong somewhere worth belonging or the memories of a home too long denied him or the combination of all three, which even he admitted linked too easily together. Whatever it really was, he packaged it, wrapped it in stained clothed, and remitted it Just Due, from Essex.

"McCoy's gotta come through," he encouraged himself as he turned on his heel. The knot slackened. "He's a good guy." He skirted past the grove of trees. His fists unclenched. "He wouldn't leave me like this." He crossed the open field. Sting faded to prickle. "He wouldn't leave himself like this." He stepped off the path. Prickle dulled to itch.

Despite the distance, and despite the population, the white stripes stole his attention.

This itch of a different kind he welcomed, delighted, and well, frankly, explicitly, saluted. Though, admittedly, it made it awkward for him to jog around the basketball court and cut out in front of her.

* * *

"I have to cut out of here," Forge told Doug. He'd already stayed an extra fifteen minutes beyond what he'd vowed. "Want me to fetch one more bottle of water before I go?" 

Musty. Stale. Dusty. Pale. Dank. Fetid. Rank. Indebted.

Metallic. Electronic. "I'm sated, thank you," Doug answered.

Forge lingered by the exit. "Hack into my summoning program when you want more."

Musty. Stale. Dusty. Pale. Dank. Fetid. Rank. Indebted.

* * *

Erik was riding the renewed rush when Irene burst into his office. 

"You can't let her do this," she told him.

"That will be all, Cortez," Erik dismissed. Without waiting his departure, he smiled, broad and energized, at Irene. "I can't very well let my old friend walk into the Lion's den on his own."

"You supercilious fool," she condemned him. "You will suffer your endgame. We will all rue it. Derailing it is the only solution. You will not be able to exploit it." She waved her cane at him. She waved it in synch with the energy roiling off of him. "Especially, not if you keep this up."

"I hear you quite clearly." He patted her shoulder as he passed by her. "I just have a different view."

"You see too narrowly."

"Untrue." His grin condescended. "I've set my sights to encompass a great deal. Now, if you'll excuse me, Destiny. I have to mediate my children's squabble and recruit more mutants to my army."

"Erik… I'm begging you."

"Don't. It doesn't suit your stature."

* * *

Amusement elevated Xavier's erudite voice when he telepathically contacted the chaperoning remainders. 

"_We will be taking off in a couple minutes."_

It was due to Logan's efforts to subdue the frightened, wailing little Litarra.

"_Let Kitty be. There's a solvent in the medlab that will do just fine."_

He fastened his safety belts and he sobered. Such a small action incurred such painful memories still.

"_Unless things go terribly wrong, we'll contact you on our way back this evening."_

"Locking it up," Storm said as she sealed the Blackbird's door.

Xavier reached out touched each of his students' minds, just a little, like ruffling their hair or giving a hug or a handshake, but he didn't skim beyond their surface thoughts. It would wound him terribly to undermine their trust in him. He valued them all so very much. He would do all in his power to keep them safe. Even if that meant—

"_And Logan, Kurt,"_ Xavier added. One mind had troubled him rather unexpectedly, but in a way that made him wonder why he hadn't been expecting it. _"Keep Rogue from…" _

He wasn't even sure what he needed to keep her from, really.

He finally settled upon the request, _"No training until we return."_

_

* * *

_

"Pester me some other time, swamp rat. I'm busy."

"Where y' going? Remy might like it."

"It'd be negligent of me to compromise the team by letting a traitor know," she said, parroting what she expected Scott to have sounded like when he lectured Kitty. Next she paraphrased Logan, succinctly informing Gambit, who had eavesdropped earlier as best he could, that her anger wasn't really for him. "That's what ya are, right?" She asked him thickly. "Switch sides on a dime. Follow the profit."

"Oui, I like money," Gambit said and puffed up like royalty. "Keeps me in the lifestyle I'm accustomed." He deflated. "Y' know. Roof, food, clothes," he tipped down his lenses to show off his ruby on onyx eyes, "Sunglasses." He popped them back into place. "And, the occasional pass of the good time. _Laissez le bon temps rouler._ Y' know, the luxuries _en vie_." Copious.

"Roof's right there." She pointed to the top of the mansion. "Stocked kitchen is under it. Full wardrobe in your room. Set of leathers probably waiting for you right below our feet. There are games in the rec room, library full of books, big ol' screen TV and lots of movies to go with it. There's computers, pool, basketball quart, big yard… Lots to do. Plus, you sure seem to get a kick out of razzing me and everyone else around here. And, far as I've seen, nobody's slipping a bill under your door, are they?"

"Other ways of charging." He almost winked, that wry smile. "Other ways of paying. Not always so direct, either."

"Is this a confession? You saying you're dirty?"

He nodded and admitted, saucily, "_Beaucoup crasseux_." He dared her, taunted her, invited her. "Evict me."

"Why bother? You're doing it for us."

"Same a y', _chér_e. Just keeping out of reach."

"But there's a problem with making everyone chase your tail." It was the same phrase he'd heard her use on Logan, except in a different way. "Easy to see where and when you turn."

He dipped his head. "And yet, here I am, chasing y'."

"All y'r chasing is a gut full of claws."

Yup, all about Logan. He wondered if the Popsicle ever got tired of it.

"He smells the lies on you."

Something of a snarl twisted _his_ face and _her_ gut. But then, she wasn't looking. She was better than that. Smarter than that. It's what everyone expected of her, leastways.

"Lies? _Cunja_! _Maudissez-les pendant qu'ils me maudissent. J'ai des cornes._ Be nice to be on _de bon côté pour une fois_. _Du côté des anges pour une fois._ Just once! _Bâtards. Profondément comme sang? Profondément comme voleurs? Eux et lui et Belle. Tous. Vous aussi, j'ai parié. Pensez au moins l'aide de bête. Mais non. Pas pour Remy. Jamais pour le baiseur avec les yeux de diable. Baisez-le. Tout le vous peut bec mon chu_"

Rogue had stopped a few steps back. She had the most toxic glare he'd ever seen on her. Not that he'd seen much of her at all. A thought he was smart enough not to let show with a twist of a naughty grin.

Soon as he had turned back, had acknowledged her change, she spat, "Baron sweet-tongue, ain't ya?" She cocked opposing hip and eyebrow, akimbo, crossed her arms under her chest, and asked, "Wanna say that in English so everyone can understand whatever kind of pathetic self-indulgent pitiful rant that was supposed to be?"

He had the good sense to look sheepish. "Désolé." But then he ruined it by slipping in a slow self-conscious, self-amused smirk—the sweet-tongue phrase had done him in—before he translated, "Sorry."

She knew it was petty and childish, but that's how she was feeling, so she said it anyway. "Yeah, you're sorry all right." She snorted and kept walking.

It grated him, incited a revenge, a second mistake he'd later thank himself for and yet regret, for which he'd doubly embrace. "Wouldn't happen to be looking for Slurpee the _boy_friend, _neh_?"

Rogue hesitated, imperceptible only to one who was looking for it, which he was. "No," she said and kept right on walking.

"Y' sure?"

Kept on walking.

He lit a cigarette with a spark of his powers and a flick to the minimally charged tip. "'Cause I saw de damnedest t'ing by de lake."

She reeled on him. "It won't work," she snapped.

He had her. Showed it in a wicked switchblade grin.

She thrust her face into his. "You hear me?"

He didn't flinch. He had her.

She flew off.

He had her.

He took a long satisfying drag off his cigarette then crushed it out. He had a bitter taste in his mouth and the blood roared his ears. He blamed the first on the only-Logan-can-smoke-inside rule and the latter on the Blackbird lifting from out of the basketball court and flying away overhead. So, he turned on his heal, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and mumbled lower than a whisper, "Sure is funny what y' can find by a lake."

* * *

She coughed and sputtered. The clear viscous fluid expunged from her lungs and onto the floor. Covered in it, sticky-pasting her hair to her face, shoulders, chest, neck and back, and sliming her skin, her already rickety limbs slipped and balked erratically out from under her, and she cracked her chin on the tiled floor. 

Forge didn't want to be there doing that any more than he wanted to be a part of anything else he'd done while stuck with Essex. It was another order among many orders that he, unlike the wired Cypher, could not ignore.

"Why me?" Forge had questioned. It wasn't like him to dole out the pet project tasks as intimate as this one.

"Just do it," Essex had snarled. There was more anger in it than the minor insubordination could have incited. Perhaps, Essex hadn't had much of a choice.

And that, THAT, Forge took significant notice of. He wrapped it in silk and tucked it deep into a pocket in the back of his thoughts.

Besides, his sympathies for the girl acknowledged, better him, than Creed.

It was little comfort Forge could offer her, but he draped the terry cloth robe on her anyways. Had he the appropriate words he would have spoken them. Alas, he did not. So, it was in morose silence that he belted the robe modestly, that he directed her wobbly steps to the shower stall, that he helped her soap and scrub all that fresh as new skin and hair, that he left the water running over her to give her a little more time to rediscover her existence, that he brought her the softest loose fitting clothing so that she wouldn't feel quite so bound, that he moved unhurried, non-invasive, deliberate, and generous as he dressed her and brushed her hair, that he bandaged her chin with uncommon irony, that he lay her mournfully on the slab, that he cuffed head, ankles, wrists, and that he ruefully pleaded "Forgive me" before he slapped the choker on her.

No, he didn't want to be there, doing that, but at least it wasn't Creed. And more so, it wasn't Essex.

Before unlocking the cuffs, before setting Malice—in her new host—free, he smoothed the sides of her hair with all the comfort, appreciation, and hope he could muster. It just happened to include three fingers brushing along the skin just behind each of her ears.

* * *

"Yes, a tour would be pleasant," said Emma as she tucked a lock of hair smartly behind her ear, composing herself. She didn't remember having it this short. She didn't remember how she even got where she was; it reminded her of the lobby of Worthington Industries Tower in Manhattan, though less… sunny. 

She had been gripped by the shoulders, roughly, and was being forced down a dank hall only minutes before when the fog of… of… she didn't have a word to cover it aptly. But, once it began to clear, once she had the first stirrings of recognition of self in the most minuscule sense of the concept, she had lashed out, painfully, to both her and the gruff guy with his paws on her. She clutched a hand to her head, holding her skull together, keeping her brain from leaking out the gaping cracks that had to have been there after that kind of pain, but she didn't stand still. The ferocious looking man with hands like claws and long hair like a lion's mane wouldn't be prone for long, and she sure didn't want to see just what those claws would feel like once he realized it was her that had tried to explode his head from the inside out.

"I just had one myself," Emma continued, "but it was rather brief. Rushed really."

She looked over the gathered group. Senator Kelly she recognized, along with the telltale identifiers of the small gaggle of secret service that lingered at all of the doors. One had almost taken her head off when she burst into the room. They also seemed nervous and watchful of all the reporters and their cameramen, who, mind you, turned their cameras from the media-loving Senator and the blue fur ball with glasses to her inelegant entrance. Besides the Senator, there was only one other person she recognized by name on sight. That was Xavier, whom she'd kept frequent tabs on over the last few years, since before she began her own mentoring program. Two people flanked him. The regal, yet timid and fragile looking African American woman with lightning white hair stood to his right side. The mid-western-farm-boy, complete with healthy muscles and glow—though too muscular and too dark of hair to fit the stereotype well enough for her—had his left side. Pushing the wheel chair from behind was a young man that suited the previous label even more. She thought it was too bad his eyes were hidden by the hideous eyewear. She had an itch in her brain that told her they would blow her away. The final person also itched at something in her head, but it hinted at something much more… scary, disturbing, wretched. All of the others were looking to him for an answer regarding her current situation, and more, it seemed, and for that, she couldn't help but want to tinker in his head as well. If she didn't like what she found, it would be a simple matter to, say, lose all motor controls, or even those over his bowels… or worse. There was very little limitation to her imagination.

She stabbed a vicious glance at that too calm, too refined, too proper, too studious and too curious looking man with the too freshly crisp hair cut, too sharply masculine jaw, and too starkly pristine white lab coat. He was too much for her good sense, indeed.

"I suspect these VIPs are the cause." She regarded the Senator with a brilliant smile and stuck out her hand—professional, confident, flirtatious, and direct—to him. "It's very nice to meet you, Senator Kelly. I'm Emma Frost. CEO of Frost Inc."

Senator Kelly grinned, winningly, appropriate for potential campaign contributors. "A pleasure, Ms. Frost. I would be more than happy if you joined us on our little foray into the heart of this complex, since, as we all know, it is the key institution for my Mutant Good Will Research Committee. You have heard of it, have you not?"

She had stumbled/ran down the halls. She took most every turn she came across, hoping she wasn't going in circles. The more she moved, the more her head pounded, but the less clouded her consciousness, and the clearer her thoughts. That was when she pushed through the door and into the public-front lobby of the Diamond Research Facility, which she figured out by the large trademarked ruby emblem hanging above the reception/security desk. Several cameras spun to take her into their scope and she was overwhelmed with an urge to touch the… empty space at her neck. The gesture was odd to her so she had maneuvered it to resemble composing her appearance for the cameras.

"Of course I've seen bits here and there on the news," she told the Senator silkily. She slid her arm into the proffered crook of his. "But, I'm sure you could enlighten me with many more interesting details on the topic."

With that, they began the tour. They left the media and the security behind in the lobby.

* * *

"A little more each time?" Kitty asked Bobby. "Sounds scary." 

"It is, but it isn't."

They were by the lake. Kitty had her shoes off so she could swing her feet over the edge of the dock into the water. Bobby skipped stones. He did it pretty well. She figured he'd done it a lot growing up.

"It goes away while I sleep, but I don't know, I have this… feeling… that I'll eventually be able to turn it on and off all on my own."

"That would be cool," Kitty said, then wanted to kicked herself for it. She dipped her head down, shyly, embarrassed. "No pun intended."

Bobby actually chuckled. The mistaken joke made him feel better; it made him feel more normal. The last thing he wanted was to feel like an outcast among the X-Men, among the other students… among mutants. He liked that about Kitty, how she always made a person feel included, like family. He missed his family.

"It _would_ be cool," he told her and plopped down beside her. A sudden grin split his face, and he added with mock-egotism, "I'll be hot."

Kitty rolled her eyes overdramatically and mock-complained, "Oh, you did not just say that!"

"Oh, I did," he said. "And you know it's true. Don't deny it!"

She broke out in fit of giggles and playfully shoved him. He returned it, then she did, then he did and with all her laughing she almost fell into the water. He grabbed her and yanked her up.

The laughter ceased. They were breathless and close. Bobby froze. Mist billowed from his between his lips, which he licked, nervous, awkward, and icy. Kitty bit her lip, let it roll out, and it frosted over with ice, her own breath escaped white as winter. She leaned in.

"Kitty…"

They shivered.

"…Rogue..."

The bushes rustled, the moment broken. Kitty glanced over to find icicles dripping from the leaves. A trail of frost glistened on the ground. It stretched from them to the bushes… and beyond.

"It's beautiful," Kitty said, hushed. She was blushing. She thought it a compliment. But then she saw Bobby's kind and apologetic and serious expression.

"I'm not doing this," he told her.

Her heart stilled, froze, and shattered into a billion pieces. It sometimes happens that way with young crush-sick girls. She ghosted and sank.

"Kitty!" He called, but it wasn't nearly as desperate as the romantically minded sixteen year old would've liked.

He was too late. She was gone.

He went to the bush and broke off one of the already melting icicles. From there, he could see farther out of the small grove. The frost littered along the trail curving around the copse of trees. Footprints spotted its length.

She was gone.

* * *

The room was so still, the bed so neatly made, the drawers so perfectly closed that for a fraction of a heartbeat, he thought she was gone. Then he saw the shoes haphazardly ejected at the foot of the bed. Then he saw the light coming out from under the bathroom door. And, then he saw the old, threadbare stuffed rabbit with one floppy ear flipped over its head and the dangling button eye. He touched it and thought of her mother, his long ago Magda. It was she who was fond of rabbits. It was she who had purchased the plush toy for their daughter. He had not been involved whatsoever. He had not been… 

He shouldn't dwell on such things, he told himself. He was grateful that the bathroom door opened to do what he could not.

"Wanda," he began. However, he was unsure of what else to say.

She moved swiftly to the opposite side of the bed as he stood. She snatched the bunny up, got it out of his reach, and sat with her back to him.

He caressed the space where it had been.

Cr-r-r-rack!

He followed the sound to its source. A family picture in a silver frame etched with bunnies. Pietro, silver haired even at that pre-teen age, grinned too large for his own face filled the right side. Wanda, dark and brooding of hair and eyes and penetrating expression, was an unmatched puzzle piece signifying the twins' fraternal state. The crack split right between them; the marred clarity of the glass there blotted out the view of Magda between them.

"I…" He began again and failed.

"I will try harder." She said it for him.

It would have to be enough for now.

* * *

"You're pathetic," Logan barked at Gambit. The cards exploded weakly more than three feet away from him. It had barely sprayed him with dust. "You're not even trying." 

"Maybe y're not worth it, _couchon_." But the truth was that he had wanted to lay it all out with Logan. He had wanted to blow off some steam. He just didn't trust it. He didn't trust not to fight back too hard, not to lose control, not to blow up Logan. He might not have been fond of him, but he wasn't that mad at him. He hadn't been that mad at anyone since Julien. And, even that was debatable.

"Maybe you're just not good enough without the shadows to skulk around in."

Logan, claws sprung, lunged at him. Gambit dodged, planted the tri-pointed tip of his bo/staff into the mortar crevice between the bricks of the alley wall, leveraged a kick off the dumpster, which rolled at Logan, and caught hold of the lowest solid rung of the broken fire escape ladder. He was up two more levels by the time Logan maneuvered the dumpster back into to place and started up the ladder himself. As Logan pulled up to the next level, Gambit was out of sight altogether. He'd ascended the roof and Logan couldn't even hear his footfalls anymore.

"End it, Elf," Logan called up to the booth. He pulled out a cigar and lit it as the scene pixel-dissolved away. When he heard the thump of Gambit's unprepared landing, he took a long hard draw and slowly blew out the smoke. He regarded him little, when he told him, "If you're not gonna show me what ya got, I'm not wasting my time."

"Maybe this is what I got," Gambit said as he stood. "Prince of t'ieves, that's Gambit, that's all."

"Sure, kid," Logan huffed. "I believe ya."

"Fine," Gambit said, now angry enough to put at least a little more risk to the fight, 'Y' really want it, then y' got it."

Clank! The bo/staff connected hard with Logan's head. The look Logan returned almost made Gambit think better of it. But then, he was really was sick of being tired, that and he was saved by whatever stole Logan's attention up in the booth.

"No way," Logan called up. "Chuck said no training for tonight."

Gambit saw Rogue, the source of the distraction, a sentiment he actually agreed upon with Logan. She made an exasperated gesture of challenge that ended with a point at Gambit. Between Logan's last statement and her motions, he deducted that Rogue had been communicating "What about him?"

For that, Gambit taunted her with a wink.

Logan figured it out too and answered with the holler to the booth of, "He doesn't count."

For that, Gambit blew Rogue a kiss.

Logan growled, almost, and blew a puff of cigar smoke in his face. "Shower up," he told him. "You stink."

When they looked back up to the booth, Rogue was gone. Gambit had plans to follow after her—sweat dripped from his bangs—after he showered. And for some reason, he had a feeling she would be waiting for him.

* * *

Caliban was waiting for her just as agreed. She would've preferred to have been there alone with him, but Xavier didn't trust any of them alone anywhere in there. Hank went missing once while in it, and she was a smaller bundle to slip between the cracks. So it was with an audience of family—Xavier, Scott, Hank, and Colossus—of enemies, Essex and Kelly/Mystique; and of strangers, Emma and again Essex. Family watched with awe and love and hope and relief, as family should. Kelly/Mystique watched with a touch of that, for she was family in her own detached sort of way, and well, such were common similarities to villainous, traitorous, infiltrating intentions as well. Though he/she played it up well as the charming politician to entertain and distract and engage and toy with the unexpected party member, Emma, there was something of the predator in the furtive glances spared between. And though, as enemy, Mystique's presence should've incited an extra layer of danger to the scheme, it invoked the opposite. In there, Mystique was more Essex's enemy than theirs, and that, as some clichés and histories respelled, made them friends. Essex watched with more detachment, but eagerness crinkled the edges of his eyes and tightened his pleasant plastic smile, and it spoke of being enthralled by his own endgame. It was a penetrating gaze that could find its little sister in Emma, who watched as though searching for herself in the display. But Storm, she traipsed the purest glimpse of them all in that moment. She looked for Caliban inside of Caliban. 

"I am to stay," Caliban said. His voice was dense in timbre but hollow of wisdom… and other like things.

Storm searched those sallow eyes as she had caressed the sallow skin when she first encountered him here. He was so different, that sickly yellow tinge to his once albino hide. But he seemed whole, he seemed himself in there, and he spared no fearful, or conspiratorial, or reverent reproach to a single one of them, so she had to take him at his word.

"Are you sure," she asked him once more. She had repeated those exact words twice already. Something in him, some vacancy she couldn't clearly identify, begged her not to leave without him.

"Caliban stay," he said without ire or mire or sire or tire or dire or even desire or lie. The presence of himself in his eyes repelled force.

"Okay," she told him. She gave him her communicator, an action which Scott wanted to protest, but which Xavier dispelled with a gesture of hand, and then told him, "If ever you want out, you call."

She stood and turned. She could not look at him a moment more.

"Well then, Senator" Hank said, marble veined, smooth, and hard. "Shall we readdress the press?"

He had said it with such vehemence nobody contained their shock. He ignored it, and went out the door. He made Essex go after him.

"Excuse me?" Essex asked him strife with superiority.

"The deal was for a trade, Nathan," Hank said. "You are not upholding your end of the bargain."

"You gave him a choice," Essex told them harshly. "I didn't interfere." There was a thread of panic to him. "I'll carry him out for you if you want."

"We don't divulge certain information to the press only if you _release_ her friend."

Essex's smile sickened then and he readjusted the hold of the cane. The light glinted off it, reflected in Essex's own eyes, and that's when the smile… changed. No physical difference marked the transition, but the thought behind the conniving and desperate expression had evolved. He'd had a new idea.

"What if I had another friend?"

He had all of their rapt attentions. He had them. It made him stand tall and proud, sinister with conceit and intelligence. He looked down at them as though from on high.

* * *

After meeting with Wanda, Erik disparaged his power high. Perhaps it was why he saved Pietro for second. Previously, Quicksilver's overabundant hyper quality, a side effect of his speed—a thought that sent him reeling in wonder over what it must have been like in his childhood days—tested Erik's patience on the best of days. Today, however, the mad tapping of foot and drumming of fingers served to relieve the anxiousness created when despair had shrouded his surging powers. 

"You will make efforts to mend this rift between you two," Erik told him in his best fatherly voice. It was remarkably similar to his I-am-King-of-mutants-hear-me-roar voice, only quiet enough for the confines of the small room.

He tapped his foot. "You think I haven't been?" He drummed his fingers.

"I think you need to work harder. I think you need to fix it."

"And what if the problem is my continuing existence?" Surprisingly the tapping and drumming had stopped sometime during the question. Neither could pinpoint which word had horded the cessation.

"Then you must find a way for her to rejoice it."

Neither spoke the shared thought that followed, but they both knew it was there. _Like you do?_

It wasn't the first time Erik marveled at how he'd kept them with him rather than having lost them to Xavier's ideals, ideals that shone like hellfire in both of their spirits. They were swimming in circles, against the currents. Coasting it was a reckoning they thought never to occur. It was one of the reasons—not all, just one and a lesser and lesser one as the years had passed and other motivations usurped it—he fought so hard for his goal of mutant prosperity. Winning brought them another step closer to the home on the hill. Picturesque, like winning itself.

The foot tapped. The fingers drummed. The energy roiled up in licks and peels.

They would need all the energy they could get.

* * *

Rogue's hands cradled her head as she crossed her feet, looking for all the world to her peeping-tom, like she was lying on a grassy knoll, picking out the animal shapes in the clouds high above. 

"Almost like floating in the Mississippi," she said to herself before busting out in that life-is-good grin again.

Maybe his hormones usurped his thief-honed awareness of his surroundings. Maybe he just wanted her to notice him. Maybe it was just her, there, sweet as custard pie, dreamy as peaches and cream, lulling him to stupidity. And maybe he hated it, thrived it, guilted it, deserved it. Whatever it was, his boot cracked that twig like a bat to her skull.

She opened one eye and saw him. And that thief-honed awareness screamed at him to run. And her grin only widened.

"Just the person I wanted to hook," she said.

And then she was on him and he was damning his observation and she was rolling him over her and he was thrilling his agility and then she rolled him again and he was clinging to her cause he sure as hell wasn't feeling the dew soaked ground under him anymore.

"I don't want t' open my eyes, do I?"

"Don't see why not," she said, the grin in her tone reminding him of Julien just after the sword skewered him and sealed Remy's fate with both families. "It ain't the fall that can kill ya."

She paused long enough for him to wonder if she'd let the impact answer for itself. But then she whispered-drawled, magnolias, peaches, river ebb, pecans, and pie, "It's my kiss."

He waited for it.

His breath hitched.

Waited for it.

His pulse sped.

Waited for it.

His temperature rose.

Waited for it.

His skin dampened.

Waited for it.

He swallowed.

Waited for it.

He licked his lips.

And…

She…

Moved.

She threw him with less force than she'd swat a fly. His rump cushioned the five or so feet fall. It was his turn to peek out one eye at her.

She hovered a dozen feet in front of him, two dozen above. "You're dangerous, Remy."

"Y' like it."

She scoffed, puffed up on of those pesky loosened white locks of hair of hers. "I _like_ that nobody's gonna miss your slimy coon-gator-ass."

"Fetching, it is, then," he said, and at the first word uttered, she dropped a whole ten feet before she caught herself. And by the time she did, he was surprised to find he was already on his feet, that he'd already crossed half the distance.

"That blind lady, Irene, she tell you to say that?"

He cocked his head to the side like a puppy. She mistook it for confusion over her question, for a denial to it.

"If I find out you're a plant of Erik's, I will leave you a dried up husk."

He believed her. "I'm not." It was the most honest thing he'd said to her and yet, he nearly choked on it when he said it.

She believed him. "Good." And, something eased between them.

She lowered to the ground, flipped that stubborn lock of hair out of her face, and asked, "Spar?"

He grinned, wicked, naughty, and genuine. "There be better ways t' get a little flesh t' flesh with this willing Cajun."

She mirrored his grin. Then, without faltering hers, she tried to kick his off. Blood pumping, he blocked with his left arm. His right hand telescoped his bo/staff, sweeping her legs. Well, he tried to, at least. It was like trying to forearm a bowling ball, trying to buckle the Brooklyn Bridge.

He quirked an eyebrow at her.

"Gotta do better than that to meet my challenge, swamp rat." It was thick and syrupy with entrenching endearment.

Remy sent a charge to the tip of the staff. He tapped it to her rear. The small detonation stumbled her, scorched a hole in the right buttock of her jeans. A mischievous leer accompanied the words, "_Mais_, isn't that interesting."

She rolled her eyes. "Distracting, more like," she said as she swatted the bo/staff aside and rounded another kick at him. It connected, and she said, "But I don't need a handicap."

"Nice view, that's for sure," he said.

He took long drawling admiration of it. Then, he threw a charged card, a distraction to his real move, some fancy footwork that ended with a jab of the charged tip of the bo/staff to the quarter sized gaping of her bare skin.

"It's also a target."

"A lure."

The kick was uncouth, but the force propelling it more than made up for it.

He wheezed and clutched his surely bruised chest. He spared more than one thought for his ribs. No wonder he hesitated when she reached out her hand.

"You're right, Remy," she said, a twinkle in her smile and eyes glistening blue reflections of the skies. "I do like it."

He let her yank him up, let his body slap against hers. Sweat beaded them both—wrangled close, chest to chest, left hand to left forearm, and outstretched right arms in mirrored clutches. Gambit got a flash of what it'd be like to dance wickedly with her. And then she grinned, spiteful, joyful, ravenous, and pushed with her left hand.

"I needed a good punching bag."

* * *

A blow to the gut. That was what catching her stumbling form in his arms was like. A blow to the gut. 

"Jean?"

It was chance that had him closest the door at the moment of her entrance. Pensive eyed, paranoia minded, rickety limbed, she had entered and tripped and he had caught her, cotton clothed, silken haired, gentle lipped and sacred.

"Scott."

They trembled then. Fear and hope and relief and disbelief and all was good and right in the world. So, they trembled, now that it was safe to do so. They had each other again.

"I take it this substitution suffices?" Cheshire.

"Yes," Xavier said too quickly. Nobody could blame him.

"Then we are done," Essex said. "Please leave."

And they did, some in separate ways, others together, but all were together and separated in so many myriad ways. Essex, with Caliban and his other specimens sequestered beyond the others' eyes, stayed at the military science base. Emma accompanied the good Senator to some other place. And the X-Men… Well, the X-Men went home. They went unawares. They went and brought a fox into the henhouse, for an ethereal faced pendant chocked malice around Jean's neck.

The Blackbird soared through the skies from Seattle to Westchester as the sun was setting. The light was behind them and darkness ahead.

* * *

**End Chapter 05 of 05.**

**Keep a look out for X-Men Rising: Part Three – "From Ashes to Embers."**

"I've got a Snowball's chance in Hell." —Bobby.  
"Y' know chére, ain't like y' got the market cornered on powers that steal y'r touch." —Remy.  
"Charles, please, get here quick. It's Kevin. I need your help." —Moira.  
"Professor, you couldn't have known. Don't be so hard on yourself." —Scott.  
"Sewers and rats and roaches, oh my. At least it's better than watching the grass grow… or doing physics homework." —Jubilee.  
"You drew this?" —Kitty.  
"I have to redeem it." —Xavier.  
"So there's no going back?" —Betsy.  
"He runs a moving company?" —Magneto.  
"There's something off. You even smell different." —Logan.  
"I've … I've got a secret." —Rogue.

And much, much more…  
:grins:

(Note: Some of the above quotes may appear in any of parts left to come. There are five sketched out total.)

* * *

**Translation of Gambit's Rant (mind you, my French could probably be better):**

"Lies? Cursed! Curse them like they curse me. I have the horns (the devil touch, cursed). Be nice to be the one on good side for once. Side of the angels for once. Just ounce! Bastard. Thick as blood? Thick as thieves? Them and him and Belle. All of them. You too, I bet. Think, at least, get Beast's help. But no. Not for Remy. Never for the fucker with the devil eyes. Fuck it. All of can you kiss my ass."

* * *

_Edited/rewritten May 27, 2006  
Edited/rewritten June 1, 2006  
Posted June 1, 2006_

_

* * *

_

_Thank you for indulging._


End file.
